Only a Nobleman
by Colubrina
Summary: You won't like this. It's a Regency-esque AU romance between original characters and a sequel to a fanfic, Bodyguard of Lies, that irritated almost everyone. Also, the chapters are too short and eventually it'll have this smut in a way that is wholly incidental to the plot and far too BDSMy for most people. COMPLETE.
1. Prologue

You won't like this.

No, really, you won't.

It's everything people hate about fanfiction: original characters and an alternate universe that bears almost no resemblance to the books you read and liked.

Worse, it's a sequel to a fic that, if you read, you probably hated. What fic is that, you ask? _Bodyguard of Lies_, of course, the dramione dystopia that I wrote in partnership with the fabulous dulce de leche go where we actually didn't lead the characters to redemption but kept it dark all the way to the ending.

Still, it left us in a world I found rather amusing and which I decided to throw into a pot with my fondness for Regency era romances and stir vigorously. Why? Because a Death Eater Regency romantic hero seems adorable to me. Fluffy Death Eater romance.

I _did_ say you wouldn't like it.

Also, of course, Theodore Nott and his wife have a relationship that's filled with consensual BDSM and that squicks people out. On the other hand, if you just want to skip right to the smut, such as it is, go to chapter 23, 'Pet Arrives.'

If you are a fan of Georgette Heyer you'll see a lot of her influence in what's to come, particularly _Devil's Cub_ and _The Corinthian_. I mean, assuming you're still reading which you shouldn't be because I've already told you that you won't like it.

. . . . . . . . . .

Edited to add: If you are a French speaker you may be tempted to correct the French. Don't. People have sent me corrections to the corrections I edited in after the first round of 'helpful' suggestions. If imperfect French bothers you, don't read this.


	2. The Parental Command

Abraxas Malfoy-Nott, son of the late, unlamented Draco Malfoy and his Mudblood mistress and foster son to the redoubtable Lord Theodore Nott, sat up in the bed and tried not to spill his wine.

He always brought his own libations to the whorehouse. Drinking the house wine was simply asking for a miserable hangover after only a few glasses and Abraxas preferred to earn his hangover the hard way: by drinking himself under the table.

He wavered a bit as the girl to his left gave a trilling laugh. "Had a bit much, my Lord?" she asked and he put the hand not holding his wine on her breast and leered at her.

"Still quite steady enough to please you, my dove," he assured her.

"How about me?" the girl to his right asked, deftly pulling the glass out of his hand before he could tip it into the sheets and setting it down on the cluttered and filthy table that sat next to the low bed.

"You too," Abraxas promised her as he fumbled with the lacings on her corset.

Alas, his plans to ravish both of the lovely professionals was scuttled by the guard who pushed the door open and stood at stiff attention, carefully not looking at Abraxas.

"What the bloody hell is this?" Abraxas demanded, only slurring a little.

"Abraxas." Lord Theodore Nott walked into the room and looked around with obvious and evident distaste. "Couldn't you do better?"

"My Lord," Abraxas tried to stand and got tangled in the sheet and nearly fell over and ended with his hands on the bed at his foster father's knees as the two women behind him tried to cover themselves with such sheets as were not wrapped around their patron's ankles.

Lord Nott sighed, a much put upon sound, and regarded the handsome young man before him. The blond curls were as rakish as ever, the Dark Mark on his arm as stark against his fair skin, the reek of alcohol as strong. "I find myself in a quandary. Do I sober you up now or let you suffer the consequences of your over-indulgence tomorrow?"

"Oh, suffering, surely," Abraxas said, unwinding the sheet from his feet and pulling on his trousers so he could appear at least somewhat presentable before his foster-father. "It is only by suffering one arrives at pleasure."

One of the corners of Theodore Nott's mouth twitched upward in a smile that, in any other man, would have been involuntary. Abraxas knew better; his foster father was letting him know that he had been, at least somewhat, amusing but Lord Nott didn't give emotional information away accidentally. Now that Lord pulled off one glove and said, with a slight frown, "I shall have to burn these gloves after touching surfaces in this unfortunate whorehouse, Abraxas. That makes me rather aggrieved with you."

"My apologies, my Lord," Abraxas said with a bow.

"More to the point," Theodore Nott continued, "You have upset Lady Nott."

Abraxas paled. The last man who had 'upset Lady Nott' hadn't lived long after that offense, though Abraxas was quite sure those last few weeks had seemed quite lengthy to the man in question. Lady Bellatrix had even come over to enjoy watching Lord Nott at work and had ruffled Abraxas' hair. "You look more like my absurd nephew every day, only with these ridiculous curls," she'd said on her way to the dungeon.

"My apologies, my Lord," Abraxas said again. "I assure you, upsetting my Lady Mother has never…"

"Stop." Theodore Nott held up a hand. "You will present yourself to her at breakfast, clean and smelling significantly better than you do right now and then you will set about finding a bride and providing her with grandchildren to dote upon."

Abraxas exhaled in relief. "Does my Lord have a girl in mind?"

Theodore Nott looked amused again. "I'm sure you can manage to find a wife on your own, Abraxas. You've no shortage of eligible girls and their scheming mamas following you around like baby geese in the park."

"It might be easier…" Abraxas tried to suggest and Theodore cut him off again.

"Oh no, my boy. Watching you suffer on the Marriage Mart will be quite enjoyable and will repay me for having to come here and fish you out of this sewer." He looked at the whores who had been trying to make themselves invisible on the bed. "Ladies," he said politely before turning to leave.

"Well," Abraxas looked at the guard who still stood at the door, clearly waiting to escort him home. "Apparently I am to be married."

. . . . . . . .

Abraxas loosely quotes the Marquis de Sade.


	3. Breakfast with Lady Nott

Lady Nott sat in her breakfast room, the sun kissing the blonde hair that age had yet to grey and the skin that time had not yet had the temerity to mar with a single wrinkle. She had become a gracious lady of the realm, indeed, and if the black leather choker with the little ring set in it she wore was not, perhaps, all the crack, well, no one ever dared to comment upon it.

"Maman." Abraxas stood in the doorway his voice warm as he looked at the only mother he could remember. He was dressed as befitted one of the pinkest of the pinks, every line of his trousers clinging to his legs and his jacket fitted to best display his well-formed shoulders, a jacket he required not one but two valets to help him into. His boots were polished to a high gloss that was the envy of a dozen of his friends, his hair rumpled in an apparently careless way that took an hour to arrange.

"You look splendid, darling," she said as he approached and took her raised hand and brought it to his lips.

"Would I dare appear before you in anything less than fine?" he teased as she dimpled at him. He pulled put a chair and, knocking the tails of his jacket out of his way, seated himself as her side. "Lord Nott informs me I am to take a bride so that I might provide you with grandchildren and I, naturally, am thrilled to have the chance to please you. Do you have any preferences, my one and only love, any qualities this girl must have in order to make you happy?"

Lady Nott regarded her foster son with fondness not marred by any illusions as to his character. "You have a devil in you, my dearest boy, but you're a catch for any woman who can hold you. Find one who can."

"Can what?" Abraxas asked, momentarily confused.

"Hold you, of course." Lady Nott said. "You're a delight to look upon, Abbie, and you remain the youngest Death Eater to ever achieve Lordship. Bringing back the heads of that Zabinis was quite a coup and no one can doubt it. And you are, of course, the heir to both the Malfoy and the Nott fortunes and, when you choose to bother with them there is nothing in your manners that even the most particular could object to. You're a catch, my love, but you're wild."

Abraxas didn't bother to deny his wildness but merely shrugged. "I have not been prompted to marriage ere now," he said. "You shall see how obedient I can be."

"I am less interested in your obedience, Abbie, than your happiness," Lady Nott said.

"I, however, am quite interested in his obedience," Lord Theodore Nott said as he entered the room, the morning paper in one hand. Time had been as kind to him as it had to his lady wife and if there was a hint of silver in his dark hair it served only to make him more imposing, to make him seem more dangerous.

Abraxas rose and bowed to his foster-father. "And you have it, sir."

"I am pleased to hear it," Theo said eyeing the young man. "You have, my boy, managed to commit nearly every indiscretion a young man of fortune and rank can and yet, I must confess, you've never been so foolish as to defy me."

"A record I plan to keep spotless," Abraxas said. "May I be excused, now that I have presented myself, to begin my quest for a girl who will meet your surely rigorous standards for purity and rank while also being able to 'hold me'?"

"Of course," Theodore said. "Do keep blood purity in mind, Abraxas. Unfortunately you are - "

"I know," Abraxas said. His birth mother's blood status was something no one tended to mention in his presence given his habit of finding an excuse for calling anyone out who did so.

" - and while people have overlooked that because of your own not inconsiderable skill and charm and temper as well as my… influence… you are less able than others to make an error in the choice of a bride."

"I know," Abraxas repeated and then kissed Lady Nott on the cheek. "Do you wish to inspect whatever girl I select before I make her an offer?"

"I trust you implicitly, Abbie," Lady Nott said. "Go find a nice girl. Or, barring that, a girl from a good family who can keep up with you."

Theo Nott opened his paper and began to peruse the morning news. "And, of course, if I don't approve, I'll simply kill her."

"Of course," Abraxas Malfoy-Nott bowed again and left his foster parents to their breakfast.


	4. The Gambling Hell

Abraxas considered going to Almack's but, really, he couldn't quite face having to escort one insipid girl after another onto the dance floor with no libation stronger than punch. He decided that what he would do instead was make a list. He would list off all the pureblood daughters (and nieces, no need to be _too_ particular) of Death Eaters and cross off the ones he already knew he couldn't stand.

The Rowle, girls, for example. Seven of them, and each less attractive and more shrill than the last. Furthermore, their brother was expensive and, if truth be told, Abraxas would prefer to not leg shackle himself to a girl with a high-pitched nasal voice and a brother with such a gambling problem that he was always in the suds

So all the Rowle girls were out.

He crossed Delphinium Flint off the list as well. While he liked horses as much as the next man, waking up to a woman with a face like a horse for the rest of his life seemed to be taking his fondness for all things equine a bit far. That didn't even begin to address the problem of her mother: Pansy Flint was a harpy if ever he'd met one and she always stared at him with a look of mingled loathing and lust that made him uncomfortable.

By the time supper had come and gone he'd written out a lengthy list and crossed every single name off. Freya Dolohov bore no resemblance to her namesake and her father was a nutter. Anais Carrow was an idiot. Piscia Snape had personal hygiene issues, plus, well, there was the blood status problem. The list was long and each possibility was more depressing than the last.

He was well and truly buggered by endless bad choices.

So he went to a hell and started to drink and throw the dice because no one would begrudge him one last night of freedom before he just gave up and took one of the Rowle girls and hoped for a large enough house he'd never have to hear her. There was a new lad at the hell, dark hair chopped off at his neck and probably barely out of the cradle he was so slender, but within an hour the two of them were drinking together – or Abraxas was drinking - and, after he'd lost too many galleons to count at cards and was more than a little top-heavy, Abraxas found himself telling the lad the tale of his woe.

"Have to get married," he explained in the dark room, squinting at his companion. "Why don't they properly light this place, anyway?"

The lad shrugged.

"Have to please my foster-father and my foster-mum. I adore her, you know, but marriage." He shook his head. "There's a shortage of pureblood girls with wit and beauty. Meaning none. Heir to two bloody fortunes and I'm still stuck with lousy choices."

"So marry out," the lad said.

"Can't," Abraxas said shortly. "My birth-mum… do you really not know?"

The lad shrugged again and said, "I was thought to be sickly, kept inside and away. I don't really know anyone."

"Tough lot," Abraxas, a man who'd never experienced a single day of ill health in his life, said. "You seem all right now."

The lad ducked his head and muttered something about how he was a damn fool now, that was what he was.

"Can't marry out," Abraxas said. "Already a bastard half-blood. So I get to choose between horse-faced and shrill." He tossed back another drink. "Lucky me. How about you? You gambling to try to escape any wonderful family pressures?"

"I'm being pressured to marry a cousin," the lad said. "Keep my vaults in the family." He shrugged. "I'd hoped to win enough here to have the money to escape but no such luck."

"Wait." Abraxas was drunk but something about that didn't seem quite right. "If you've the inheritance why d'you need to…"

"Underage," the boy said hastily.

"Ah," Abraxas said.

"I think you should go home," the boy said, sounding uneasy as Abraxas downed another glass of fire-whiskey.

Abraxas snorted but tossed some money on the table and hauled the lad out of the dark hell and onto the street. "Forget home, let's go kick up a lark."

The boy struggled to pull his arm away and, in the light of the moon, Abraxas looked at his new friend. His fair, slender new friend with dark eyes and badly cut black curls that looked as if he'd hacked his own hair off with a knife.

"Bloody hell," Abraxas said.

. . . . . . . .

Almack's is a historical place often seen in Regency novels because it was a fashionable ballroom. I did say Georgette Heyer inspiration and all and you went and read it anyway so don't come whining to me.


	5. Doing the Right Thing

Abraxas shook his head and looked at his companion again. "I'm apparating us back to my place," he muttered. "Before anyone sees you."

"You're too drunk to – "

Abraxas yanked the person close to him and reassured, in an unsteady tone guaranteed to cause unease, "Apparated drunker than this." And then they were in his main parlor and he released his new friend and began to circle around the slight figure.

"How long," Abraxas said at last, "have you been a girl?"

"All my life," the girl responded, sounding somewhat affronted.

Abraxas narrowed his eyes. "How long have you been a _boy_?"

"Just tonight," the girl admitted.

"Your disguise is terrible," Abraxas said. "Why not even a glamour?"

"Underage," the girl said, narrowing her eyes. "I can't exactly do a glamour with my Traced wand, can I?"

Abraxas laughed. "How much do I owe and who do I pay?"

"What?" That was nearly a shriek.

"Do I just pay you a simple flat fee for your time or should I expect your family to pretend to be horrified I've compromised you all the while calculating how much they can ask me to pay them?"

"I'd much prefer my family have no idea we've met at all," she said, edging towards the door. "You seem a nice fellow, if a bit of a maudlin drunk, and I'd hate for them to kill you."

Abraxas moved to get between her and the exit. "I'm shockingly hard to kill. Is this the family with the cousin you're supposed to marry." He smirked down at her. "You can't be a pureblood. I've never even met you before."

"My blood status is my own business," she snapped and he smiled.

"Mmm. Who are you, again?"

"My name is Drusilla," she said, chin raised and fiercely held in place as she, so very obviously, controlled a tremble.

"Drusilla _who_?" he pressed and she mumbled something he couldn't quite hear but tried to guess at. "Drusilla _Black?"_

She nodded, looking miserable. "Everyone calls me Dru."

"Not possible," he dismissed her claim. "There are no daughters of the House of Black. Bella's childless."

"Not from _Bellatrix_," the girl – Drusilla, no, Dru – sounded annoyed.

"Then who's your mother?"

"I have no idea."

Abraxas stared at her and she groaned and sank into one of the chairs in the room. "My father showed up at my grandmother's house when I was a toddler and handed me off. Since Grandma Walburga didn't slit my throat in my sleep I've always assumed my mother was a pureblood; she had what one might call 'opinions' on that issue. You're a half-blood bastard and I'm, as far as I can guess, a pureblood one. And then my father went off and died _too_, and so did Grandma, and I've been raised by Uncle Rastaban and Aunt Willhellmina."

Abraxas made a face. Rastaban was one of the truly crazy ones.

"Just so," she said, "and he's not even really my uncle but Aunt Bella refused to take me in and somehow he was the closest thing to family and they want me to marry their _son_ who has never had a single conversation that didn't include an analysis of the foods he can't eat and whose hands are clammy and who I found making one of the housemaids cry."

Abraxas eyed the girl. "I hate to damage the charming naiveté that led you to think it was a good idea to dress up as a boy and visit a gambling hell, but your 'cousin' is hardly the only pureblood to tumble a housemaid. If your requirements for a husband are going to include chastity you might as well retire to the country now."

"He was making her _cry_," the girl repeated, her voice low, "and retiring to the country is _exactly_ what I want to do."

"Explain," Abraxas said, propping himself against the edge of the door as the room wavered a bit.

"I have an aunt," the girl hedged, "well, technically a bit of a second cousin but… she's in France. She… disappeared during the height of the post-War troubles and I have an address and… I was going to go and move in with her."

Abraxas held his hand out and when the girl looked blank he snapped his fingers and said, "Hand over the address." She flushed and fished a bit of parchment out of a pocket in what, in the light of his own room, he now saw were remarkably poorly fitted trousers and handed it over.

"Narcissa Malfoy?" He raised an eyebrow. "Your second cousin is Narcissa Malfoy? Fascinating. Does she know you're coming?"

"No," the girl admitted.

Abraxas began to laugh. "Well, clearly I have to do the right thing now."

"You can't take me back to the Lestranges!" she said in a panic, looking like she might make a bolt for the door at any moment.

"Of course not," Abraxas said. "I said the _right_ thing, not the tedious and predictable thing. We have to improve your disguise so no one will wonder why a nice pureblood girl is traveling alone with me. You can be my… aide? And then, obviously, we take you to Lady Malfoy."


	6. Who Are You?

"I am relieved you feel for my plight," Dru said, relaxing into the chair she'd sunk into earlier and running her hand through her short hair. "Being forced to marry would be most odious."

"Indeed," Abraxas regarded the girl with some amusement. "I find I cannot think of a single thing that would depress me more. Still, I have to ask, you silly chit, what made you light upon cross-dressing and gambling as a solution to your problems." He crossed his parlor and fished a sobriety potion out of the bar. "I need to find my scissors so I can fix that horrible mess you've made of your hair."

"There's nothing wrong with my hair," she objected and he rolled his eyes.

"No one who knows me – no one who knows my foster-father – would believe I would permit any aide of mine to look so… unkempt." Abraxas drank down the potion and made a face. "Dreadful things. I'd prefer the honest pain of a hangover."

Dru pulled her feet up under herself and regarded him as he found his scissors, rolled his sleeves up and squinted at her hair as if trying to decide what, exactly, he might be able to do with it. "You're a Death Eater," she said, looking at his Mark.

"For almost a decade now," he agreed.

"Ophichus wasn't able to become one," she observed. "Too delicate, Aunt Willhellmina said."

Abraxas looked at her. "Shall I assume that Ophichus is both the not-quite-cousin the Lestranges want you to marry and that I need not live in fear he'll come after me to avenge your honor."

Dru giggled into her hand. "If he did the only thing you'd need to worry about is him boring you to death. Do you know there are over 23,000 potentially harmful proteins in wheat?"

"That seems like a lot." Abraxas approached her and ran his fingers through her hair, startled by how soft it was. He lifted the hair first one way and then another and finally said, "Scootch forward so I can get to the back." She did and he neatened up the edges and, with a few extra deft snips, turned the ragged disaster she'd had before into a perfectly fashionable cut.

"Why, if you are underage, are you so eager to flee dear Ophichus' clutches, anyway?" he asked, pulling her to her feet and spinning her around so he could look at the absurd costume she had on. As she turned he admired her. She had a neat figure, dark grey eyes that seemed a bit too trusting and, with her new hair cut, a thoroughly gamine charm. It was clear that he had to keep this absurd girl from heading off to France to find his long missing grandmother on her own. He hoped – dearly hoped – Lord Nott would agree with that assessment.

"I turn seventeen in two weeks," she said glumly. "Aunt Willhellmina already had the invitations for the wedding printed."

Abraxas transfigured the pants to a much better fit but gave up the shirt as a lost cause and rang for his valet. A whispered conversation at the door followed by a very disapproving sniff and the man went away.

"I am," Abraxas said, "still waiting for the explanation as to why cross-dressing was the answer."

Dru looked at him as if he were simple-minded. "Obviously, I couldn't go to a hell as a _girl_," she said. "And no one even knows I _exist_ because I've been kept so secluded; I don't have any friends I can run to." She touched her hair. "It feels so weird short."

"I'm still not following why you needed to gamble," Abraxas said, penning a quick note at his desk.

"To get enough money to go to France and find my Aunt Narcissa, of course. And I have to travel as a boy to avoid…" She broke off there.

"Quite," he said, swapping the note for the shirt his valet had brought, still muttering disapproving things under his breath. "Here, this should fit better."

She took the shirt and then looked at him, suddenly nervous, and he made a show of turning around so she could change in privacy. "You're far too young for me, you know," he said. "I'm practically old enough to be your father."

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Twenty-five," he replied.

"Not at all old enough to be my father," she disagreed and he shrugged.

"It's much too late to be doing sums," Abraxas said. "Settle for knowing I have no intention of making love to a girl who isn't even of age."

"Ophichus didn't have a problem with it," she muttered.

"I," Abraxas said, "am not Ophichus."

"Who are you, anyway?" Dru asked.

"Lord Abraxas Mal... Nott," he said.


	7. Travel Plans

Dru Black thrust her hand out. "Nice to meet you, Lord Abraxas Nott."

Smothering a smile at her artless greeting, Abraxas took the hand and bowed over it, treating her with the same courtesy he'd accord any other pureblood aristocrat. She giggled again as he brushed his lips over her knuckles. "And I am most fascinated to have met you, Drusilla Black."

"Oh, I'm not fascinating," she said, "I'm a dead bore."

He raised his brows but forbore to comment.

"Now," she continued, "I was going to try to get the ferry to France and then – "

"A ferry?" Abraxas interrupted her with some horror. "With Muggles? You were going to take a ferry with Muggles?"

"I can't afford to be nice about it," she said, cocking her head to the side and looking at him. "I haven't the blunt to Portkey and there's nothing wrong with a boat."

Abraxas eyed her and tried to contain his horror at the very idea of crowding onto a boat with a bunch of Muggles – did Muggles even bathe? He wasn't sure – and sailing across the Channel. "I think we can do better than that," he said at last and, opening a cupboard, he began rifling through the random objects found within, each sporting a small tag that had been attached with a bit of twine.

"What are those?" Dru asked, coming up behind him.

"Portkeys, of course," he said. "I'm trying to find one to the Nott house in Paris. We'll go there and then see about flooing to whatever village your Aunt is in, get some rooms at a decent Inn and set about wrangling an introduction."

"How do you have an entire cupboard of Portkeys?" she asked, impressed for the first time. Abraxas laughed again. Neither his perfectly appointed room, the valet at his beck and call, nor his spotless clothing - not even his title - had caught her eye. But Portkeys, now, those, apparently, were worth noticing.

"Do you know what being a Death Eater and a Lord means?" he asked as he batted her hand away from a teapot that would land her in South America.

"Uncle Rastaban is a Death Eater," she said, a mite defensively.

"_Was_ a Death Eater," Abraxas corrected her. "Now, like most of the old guard, he's a loon who stays alive mainly by dint of not being noticed. And he's not a Lord. My title, you delightfully innocent minx, is not hereditary. I earned it by means of services rendered, services I continue to render. Being able to get places quickly is an important part of my job."

"Oh." Drusilla looked up at him with those big, trusting grey eyes and he sighed and considered the long-term implications of picking up stray kittens at the side of the road. The infernal Lestranges had clearly kept her under such close watch she had only the faintest idea how the world worked, all, he suspected, in a long-planned bid to maintain control over the substantial Black vaults.

"Isn't it a bit… improper… for me to travel with you by Portkey to your house?" she asked.

"It seems a bit late to be worrying about the proprieties now," Abraxas responded. "It pains me to point out but you're dressed as a boy, a bit of a scrubby one at that, and have been alone with me for quite some time. Your reputation, should anyone find out, is already ruined so there's no need to try to preserve its shredded remnants with uncomfortable travel. Plus, of course, the hell."

"I am not scrubby!"

Abraxas snorted. "You are most certainly scrubby."

"I've a good mind to not go off with you after all," Dru said with a stamp of her foot.

"Nonsense. You're my young aide and we're off on an adventure. And I have no intention of letting you travel alone so let that absurd thought fly away, never to return. You, my dear, are clearly a gift from Providence, sparing me the shrill tones of my future for at least a few more weeks."

"Really?"

"Either a gift or a disaster. I can't be wholly sure which."

"No one's ever called me a gift before," she said, tucking her hand trustingly in his as he activated the Portkey and they were whisked away to France.


	8. The Lost Black Girl?

Lady Nott brushed her hair and if she'd long stopped sitting on the floor by the fire to do so the low stool she rested gracefully on was no less symbolically menial. Theo stood behind her, his fingers resting casually over her throat, feeling every swallow as she swayed against him. The robe she had slipped on after their evening's play still had the deliberate tear at the hem she'd used to incite him.

"Ah, pet," he said, "You remain incomparable."

She cooed a little at that.

"Your son, however, has taken himself off to Paris without permission." Theodore sighed, sounding more amused than irritated.

Lady Nott stirred a little under his momentarily tightened fingers and he released her.

"He has managed, it would seem, to find the one pureblood girl in all of Britain who might actually make him more wealthy than he already is and they're off on some absurd adventure."

"But will he love her?" Lady Nott asked after getting tacit permission to speak. "Will she love him?"

"She's the lost Black girl so, assuming she takes after the rest of her thoroughly mad family, I don't doubt she'll have him running in circles and jumping through hoops to please her, utterly unaware he's doing any of it." Theo answered her. "They love passionately, those Blacks. Pity about the instability."

"Lost Black girl?" Lady Nott asked, turning on her stool to look up at him, her eyes narrowed as she transformed from his pet to the viper he'd turned her into over these many years. "I thought the House of Black was nearly extinct."

Theo took her hands in his and settled down to sit at her feet to explain. "Most people thought Regulus died in the first War and, of course, he did take a rather nasty curse when he changed sides, but it was a long-lasting one and it took him decades to actually shuffle off this mortal coil. He went into hiding, which was smart of him, and did nothing to arouse attention, and, well, everyone had bigger problems than pursuing a dying traitor for some years. He had an affair with the younger Delacour girl – apparently she had no standards but what can you expect from the French - and after she died in childbirth and he realized he was at the end he dumped the brat on Walburga."

"Traitor's get?" Lady Nott asked, a little worried but Theo caressed her hands in reassurance.

"Walburga, dreadful harpy that she was, still took her in; the Lestranges raised her. Her father's as despicable as Abraxas' birth mother but her blood's pure and she is as untainted by her father's betrayal as Abbie is by his mother's blood. She's a trifle Veela, mayhap, but that's popular these days. No, she's fine. Something quite beyond the common touch, really, if the glimpses I've caught of her are accurate, but that's Veela blood for you. Her birth was hushed up because Walburga'd been pretending Regulus was dead for years. Bit hard to explain how your dead son showed up one day with a base born daughter."

"I never liked Walburga," Lady Nott said.

"A woman who lived far too long," Theo said; he'd often suspected his little pet had ended that woman's life. The lingering illness the old witch had finally died of was his pet's typical style. He'd never asked, of course. He'd mentioned Walburga was in his way and then the woman had developed a wasting disease and if it was one common to elderly witches with a fondness for certain tonics, well, the timing had still been remarkably fortuitous. "Though one could say that for Regulus as well."

"I like the idea of Abbie with a Black," Lady Nott said, clearly dismissing Walburga from her mind. "He needs a wife who will keep him busy which that ridiculous Delphinium Flint certainly could never do."

Theo smirked up at his lovely wife. Their mutual contempt for the bulk of their set always amused him. She was not a respectable person, his little pet, and neither was he. In addition to socially destroying anyone who annoyed her, she was fond of cursing people and any wife her beloved Abbie brought home that she didn't care for would have had a difficult time indeed.

"A bored Abraxas is an Abraxas at a whorehouse," was all Theo said, agreeing with her. "And it will aggravate Bella, always a delightful bonus."


	9. A Slight Accident

Their journey to France went off without a hitch for almost nine hours. They arrived at the house and, if the staff were surprised to see the younger Lord Nott appear unannounced with a nameless boy in tow they were far too well trained to let that show, at least in front of him.

They also contained so much as a single raised eyebrow when Lord Nott had the apparent schoolboy ensconced in one of the best guest rooms and ordered that breakfast be sent to him when he woke.

"Si ce est un garçon, je suis un Muggle" one housemaid muttered under her breath as she headed back down below-stairs.

Her best friend laughed. "Penses-tu que Comte-Pair Nott ...?" she asked.

The butler glared at them both and they stopped their speculations as to the gender of their newest house guest and what his – or her – relationship to Lord Nott might be.

No, everything was quite fine until Abraxas walked in on Dru without knocking the following morning and she shot him.

His reflexes were excellent and he was, as he'd told her, shockingly hard to kill, so he had a wandless and silent _protego_ cast before he'd even consciously registered that she had a wand in her hand but all he managed to do was partially deflect her curse so it hit him in the shoulder. He stumbled back, his hand flying to the deep cut that was already oozing blood that was staining his shirt and spreading in an increasingly wide circle.

"And you call yourself a dead bore," he said as he stood there putting pressure over the wound. "Do you always greet people with such violence?"

"Oh Salazar," she cried, dropping her wand and putting her hands over her mouth. "I didn't mean to hurt _you_. I just… you startled me is all."

"I begin to suspect," he said, flinching a bit as he moved, "that your cousin Ophichus and I are going to need to have a little discussion when we – when I - return to Britain."

A servant burst into the room and, catching sight of Abraxas' injury, gasped and ran to fetch some assistance.

"You know," Abraxas said, frowning at the girl who still gaped at him from the bed, "I quite liked this shirt. I wish you hadn't ruined it. Blood is almost impossible to get out of silk."

"I'm so sorry," she guiltily. "I didn't think… I… I know you wouldn't be…"

"I realize it may be shocking to you but I have yet to have to force myself on any female," Abraxas said, his eyes starting to twinkle as she got control of herself and approached him. Pulling out a handkerchief she even began to tie up his arm. "I must offer you my compliments. It's been some time since a curse caught me quite so unawares."

"Well," Dru said rather sternly as she bound up his arm while standing there in a long nightdress and her bare feet. "You should have knocked."

"Apparently," Abraxas agreed. He looked down at his arm. "I do think this will slow down our journey a bit, however. Do you mind terribly, my dear, if we linger here a few days? Unless I'm quite mistaken you laced that curse with a bit of a toxin and I suspect that, once it hits my blood stream I'm going to be a tad feverish and incoherent."

"I'm so sorry," she said again, wringing her hands now that she'd finished tying her makeshift bandage and looking at him regret and worry written across her face.

"Think nothing of it," he said politely. "But I would be most obliged if, once the damnably slow staff arrives, you have them put me to bed and call a Healer."

"I…I'll do that," she agreed.

"And, Dru?" he added.

"Yes?" she said.

"Be sure to remember to teach me that curse once I'm – " and then he staggered down to knees, catching himself on a chair with one hand as she tried to catch him and ease his slump to the floor.


	10. Not a Gentleman

Because Ophichus had been so sickly as a child Drusilla had become a capital sick-nurse and she dressed herself up as a boy, glared at the Healer and the housemaids, and sat herself down by Abraxas' bedside and refused to leave. She held glasses of water to his lips, forced him to drink potions, even responded to his fevered ramblings as though they made sense which, by and large, they did not.

"You shouldn't sit here," Abraxas said during a lucid moment.

"Don't speak to me in such a nonsensical way or I might become annoyed with you," she said, her hands folded restfully in her lap. "You made more sense when you were raving then you do now."

"It is not your job to – "

"Don't vex yourself," Drusilla ordered him. "You'll relapse. And, besides, it's quite my fault that you're in this predicament at all. It would hardly be delightful of me to leave you to suffer while I traipsed about Paris enjoying myself."

Abraxas tried to prop himself up and glared at her. "You mustn't go out, mustn't let anyone see you. Dru, you mustn't. You'd be ruined." But she patted his hand gently and, worn out by even that small exertion, he fell back against the pillows. "Promise me," he whispered.

"Yes, Lord Nott," she said, her voice as soothing as she could make it. "I'll stay right here. Everything will be fine."

"Don't call me Lord, Dru," he said and he fell back into a fitful sleep as she stroked his hand.

When he woke again she was still there, still looking as untroubled and fresh as if sitting by a bedside caring for the sick was of no import at all. She smiled down at him and he looked up into that untroubled countenance and found himself smiling back. "You are the most irritating girl," he said. "Sitting here when I expressly told you not to."

"I'm afraid my Aunt has complained a number of times that I'm not the most biddable girl ever," Drusilla agreed, "but I'm quite good with the sick."

"Your talents will be wasted on me, I'm afraid," Abraxas said. "I'm disgustingly healthy." He eyed her with some amusement, "Except, of course, when my aide curses me."

She looked down at the floor, a seemingly abashed look on her face.

"Why is that, Dru?" Abraxas asked very quietly.

"Why is what, my Lord?"

He frowned at her very proper use of his title but let it go. "Why do you greet unannounced visitors to your bedroom with a nasty curse?"

"It was nothing more than a mistake, my Lord." Drusilla looked up and he noted the haunted look in her eyes and her firm chin and nodded to himself. "I'm really very sorry. It won't happen again, I promise."

"Indeed," he said. "It won't."

Drusilla searched his eyes at the low tone but he said nothing more on the subject and she didn't pursue his meaning.

He pushed himself upright to a seated position and noted how quickly she plumped and rearranged pillows until he was wholly comfortable. "So, Dru," he said, "how many days am I to be confined before the Healer will let us continue on our quest to find your second cousin?"

"At least two, my Lord," she said and he picked up one of the smaller pillows and threw it at her head. That was quite enough with the 'my Lord'ing. She caught the tossed pillow neatly and, with a frown tucked it back behind him again.

"If you call me 'my Lord' again I shall have to beat you, Dru," he said apologetically though the smirk dancing around his mouth belied his tone. "It's Abraxas."

"Beat me," she scoffed, "You wouldn't dare."

He held her eyes with his own for several long seconds and she began to blush furiously and his smirk grew until he said, "No, not unless you asked very nicely I wouldn't dare at all." Her eyes widened at that and he finally laughed and looked away and she sagged ever so minutely in the seat by his sick bed. "I'm sorry, Dru," he said through his laughter, "that wasn't nice of me at all."

"You're a horrible man," she agreed. "You are _not_ a gentleman."

"No, my dear. I'm only a nobleman," he admitted, trying with only limited success to banish the knowing smile from his face. "Whatever shall we do, Miss Drusilla Black, to fill the two days we have in front of us?"


	11. To Be So Fortunate

Dru was very good at chess. Abraxas groaned as her pawns cornered and began kicking his king and, when he looked up from the slaughter, she was laughing at him, her dark eyes crinkling and her mouth turned up in one of her contagious smiles.

"That's three to one," she said, trying to school her expression into one a tad less gleeful. "Do you want to try again?" She bit her lip and then, with an absolutely unrepentant smirk, added, "I could play you without my queen, give you a bit of a chance."

"No, thank you," he said. "I think I need a break from being humiliated by a mere chit of a girl." He poured some claret into a glass and sipped from it. "How is it you're so very good at this?"

She shrugged. "I've played a lot. It was one of the few things that kept Ophichus happy when he was ill so – "

"Quite." Abraxas had developed an almost irrational dislike of her cousin Ophichus.

"Tell me about your family," Dru invited as she tucked the chess pieces back into their box. "They must be very proud that you're a Death Eater and a Lord."

"I suppose," Abraxas shrugged and drank more claret. "It's what I was raised to do. I took the Mark at sixteen."

"What are they like?"

Abraxas thought of his foster mother and smiled, then wondered how, exactly, he could explain his parent's relationship to this girl who, however she'd grown into someone who cursed first, would probably be as horrified as almost everyone else by the Notts.

"My mother is the most beautiful woman I've ever met," he began. "She has long golden hair and… my father told me that when he met her, even though she was dressed in a dirty servant's dress, she still outshone any woman he'd seen before."

Dru reached up and ran a hand self-consciously over her short dark hair. "Aunt Willhellmina told me I should be grateful I had an estate, otherwise no one would…"

Abraxas snorted and Dru startled like a skittish filly and clutched her hands back in her lap. He looked at her for a moment and then said, his voice as gentle as he could make it, "It's true, my absurd girl, that if you had been properly presented at court and spent the year having a Season, as you should but probably won't, there would be plenty of men who would pay attention to you only in the hope of having access to the Black fortune."

She nodded and looked away from him.

"But, Dru, that only means you'd have to be more careful than most about who you trusted, not that you aren't beautiful."

The look of raw gratitude she sent him made his heart catch in his throat. He reached out towards her, then, suddenly mindful, just took one of her short black locks and tugged on it. "See what you've done, you manipulative brat? You've not only beaten me at chess, you've gotten me to sing your praises. You're a menace."

"Tell me more about your parents," she said, smiling a little at him.

"They're..." Abraxas sighed. "They're very much in love but… some people have marriages where both partners are equal and while I don't think my father respects or esteems anyone as much as he does my mother, Theodore Nott is a man who expects, and gets, absolute obedience."

"Oh." Dru frowned a bit. "Is that the kind of marriage you'll be making?"

Abraxas looked away from her at that, out the window near the table they'd been sitting at and towards the street. "I should be so lucky as to be married to a woman I admire as much as he admires my mother," he said at last. "I should be so fortunate as to marry for love." He looked down at the wine glass in his hand and, with a grimace, drank the rest down in one swallow. "I wouldn't want a wife who obeyed my every command, who needed permission even to speak," he admitted, still not looking at Dru. "It certainly works for them but… I would want any woman I married to know, the way my mother does, that she can absolutely trust me. That I would move hell itself to protect her. That no one should ever dare to so much as look at her in a way she didn't care for."

"She'll be lucky, this future wife of yours," Dru said.

"She'll be a horse-faced, pureblooded harridan who's willing to overlook I'm a half-blood in order to get her family's hands on my money," Abraxas corrected her.

"She'll still be lucky," Dru said, her voice very soft, but Abraxas, staring out the window caught up in this grim vision of his future, didn't hear her.


	12. A History Lesson

"How did they meet?" Dru asked, interrupting Abraxas' self-pitying musings. "Your parents, I mean?"

"My foster-parents?" Abraxas turned back towards her and poured himself another glass of claret. "How good is your history?"

"Not great," Dru admitted. "I was educated at home and Uncle Rastaban didn't exactly bleed freely when it came to the governess' wages."

"Figures," Abraxas snorted. "Well, does the name 'Caisteal Colquhoun' mean anything to you?" When she shook her head he sighed. It was a tad humbling to be reminded that the historical event that had shaped his life was so unimportant her second-rate governess hadn't bothered to cover it. "It used to be a stronghold of the Dark Lord's regime in Scotland; my foster-father, my birth father and a man named Blaise Zabini were all sent up there to pacify the local cells of the rebellion."

"Wait," Dru squinted at him. "Wasn't Blaise Zabini the name of one of the two leaders of the rebellion?"

"Well, I'm glad to know the blunt spent on your education wasn't totally wasted," Abraxas said with a roll of his eyes.

"War's boring to read about," Dru admitted. "I might have skived off a lesson or two."

"It's even less fun to wage," Abraxas said, taking a sip from his glass, "but necessary unless we plan to let the barbarians in at the gates." He exhaled and looked at the girl gazing back at him with those big, grey eyes. "Are you sure you want to hear this story? It's not exactly cheerful."

"I like learning about you," she said simply and he closed his eyes for a moment before continuing. "So my foster-mother was assigned to my foster father's room as his maid, much, rather ironically, as my mother was assigned to my father's. As I mentioned before, Lord Nott was immediately taken by how beautiful his little maid was, even under all the dirt – and if you only knew one thing about my foster-father you'd know how much he despises slovenliness so she must have really been something – and he installed her as his mistress with the traditional carte-blanche."

"She was his _mistress_?" Dru sounded fascinated and a little appalled and Abraxas laughed. "Wasn't she a lady of quality?"

"She was a peasant," Abraxas said with a grin. "A poorly educated, pureblooded, beautiful little nobody from the wilds of Scotland."

"And then he fell in love with her and married her? That's so romantic," Dru breathed out.

"I suppose," Abraxas admitted, though thinking of his foster-father as romantic took a bit of a mental stretch. "But marry her he did, and brought her back to court and set her up as a lady and dared anyone to suggest she was beneath his touch."

"Did anyone?"

"No one who lived, no."

"Definitely romantic," Dru said firmly and Abraxas laughed again.

"Chit," he said with obvious fondness. "I can tell you were raised by a Death Eater, even a mad failure of one, if you find that romantic."

"What about your birth parents?" Dru asked.

Abraxas could feel his shoulders tighten just at that innocent question. Most people in his set knew not to ask him about his despised filthy, failures of parents. "They're dead," he said and stopped.

"I guessed that much," she said, her eyes looking suddenly wise. "If you don't want to talk about them…"

"They were terrible, worthless people," he said, his voice curt. "My father was so incompetent he not only lost the entire outpost he was in charge of, he didn't even notice that one of his two main aides was working for the other side."

Dru reached a hand out and placed it lightly on his. "You don't need to tell me this, Abraxas," she said.

"Oh, everyone knows it," he said, his voice bitter. "If you hadn't been raised in almost total isolation you'd know it as well; you might as well hear it from me and not your cousin Narcissa. I'm sure she'll have opinions on the matter, and on me." He turned his hand to grasp at her fingers and she squeezed back. "It gets better, you see. My mother _killed_ my father. Cursed him and left him to die the very day the rebels he'd failed to catch blew the whole keep up."

"Why?" Dru said, her voice catching. "Why would she…"

"She was pregnant with me," Abraxas said. "And scared and Blaise Zabini told her my father had killed her only friend and she just… snapped."

"Had he?" Dru asked.

Abraxas laughed, a cold low sound that made her squeeze his fingers more tightly as if she could will happiness back into him. "No. It was a lie." He looked at Dru and knew she was seeing into the bleakest part of his soul. "I'm the one who killed Ginevra Zabini. Tracked her and Blaise down once I was made a Death Eater and killed them both. Revenge and policy in one neat assignment."

"You're _that_ Abraxas Nott," Dru said, as if a puzzle piece had fallen into place. "Youngest Death Eater to be made a Lord, the man who broke the resistance."

Abraxas stared at her in confusion. "What?" he asked, thrown out of his bitter tale by the incongruence of her statement. He'd expected pity or horror or that she'd pull away and despise him, not this odd sort of recognition.

"Ophichus is a fan," she said, a devilish look dancing around the corners of her eyes. "I knew your name sounded familiar but I couldn't think of why. He cut out all the newspaper stories about you and stuck them to the wall of his room. He _loves_ you, Abraxas. He wants to be just like you. I don't suppose you'd give me an autograph we could owl him because that would be – "

"Please tell me you're trying to bamboozle me," Abraxas said, cutting her off with a grimace of distaste.

The evil little smirk on her face, however, told him she wasn't and, leaving one hand holding hers, he took a deep drink from the glass he held in the other hand.

"What happened to your mother?" Dru asked after a short pause.

"Dead too," Abraxas said. "Killed by my foster parents. Not that they know I know that."

"What?" Dru looked at him, the wine glass still on one hand while he idly twined the fingers of his other hand through hers. "But… that's terrible, Abraxas. How can you..."

"Love them?" he asked her and she nodded.

"My birth mother was a filthy, disgusting Mudblood," Abraxas said, his tone controlled and level, "who managed, in barely a year, to destroy my father's career and then murder him. She left me with nothing but the legacy of a tainted, traitorous heritage I've had to fight against my whole life. If Lord and Lady Nott hadn't taken me in, hadn't raised me as their son, I'd be a pauper on the streets. They've given me everything – everything – I have in my life. Education. Respect. Love." His fingers clenched around hers so hard she made a slight whimper and he had to force himself to loosen his grip. "If Hermione Granger were still alive, if I found out she was hiding in some village somewhere, I'd track her down and kill her myself."

"Oh, Abraxas," Dru said, and she took the wine glass out of his other hand and set it to the side before taking that hand in hers. "I'm so sorry."

"It wasn't your doing," he said, struggling for self-control. "You're very kind to be concerned about me. I assure you, I would prefer it if you did not allow my unfortunate history to trouble you in any way. Indeed, if you would contrive to forget I am the offspring of a… a fool and a traitor I would be most grateful."

Drusilla picked his hands up and brushed her lips over the tips of his fingers. "Consider it forgotten," she said softly, "though I, of all people, would never judge a man by the sins of his parents."

He looked at her in perplexity for a moment until he realized. Regulus Black. The moment she saw his comprehension she nodded. "Just so," she said. "Maybe your father was a fool but mine actually betrayed the Dark Lord. Turncoat Death Eaters are rare and ones who live long enough to have a child are…"

"Unheard of," Abraxas said.

"My grandmother, and later Aunt Willhellmina, did their best to make sure I wouldn't go down his path," she said, her voice far too calm. "A bastard and a traitor's get, only allowed to live because of my value as one of the last of the Blacks. But… since they permitted me to live, it was my duty to repent his sins, to atone for them. To _suffer_ for them." Her voice broke at that last bit and Abraxas watched as a single tear slid down her cheek. He pulled a hand away from her and brushed it away.

"I'll kill her," he said and Dru smiled a bit wanly.

"Walburga's been a dead for a while."

He shrugged as he took her hand back as if he'd never release it. "One down, one to go."

She laughed at that, her throat closing a bit around the sound as she bit her lip and turned her face away from him. "I almost think you would."

"Do you want to watch?"

She turned back sharply at that. "You're not kidding," she said as she stared at him.

"I'm a _Death Eater_, Drusilla, and not a broken fool of one like Rastaban. And they hurt you."

She was still just staring at him. "How about your mother," he finally said. "What happened to her?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "She's just some nameless pureblood who died. Regulus didn't even marry her."

"How do you know?"

Dru looked startled for a moment. "I… I guess I don't know," she said. "They just told me he hadn't, that I was base born and lucky to be… I never thought to check."

"Well," Abraxas said, "Maybe before we head off to leave you on your second cousin's doorstep we should find out who this mysterious mother is and whether Regulus did the right thing by her? Maybe you have an entire lot of people ready to love you as the long lost daughter of their sister or cousin or some such."

"It would be nice to be loved," Dru said and Abraxas had, yet again, to be careful not to crush her fingers in his.


	13. Beatings

Once Abraxas decided to track down Drusilla's missing mother he wasted no time but took advantage of the many resources available to a wealthy and powerful man who not only was a Death Eater himself but the foster-son to the assumed head of the Dark Lord's intelligence service.

People tended to tell Abraxas anything he asked for fear he was working for his father. Usually that irritated him but for this he decided to simply exploit it.

It took two days for the results to come back to him during which time he lost more games of chess than he preferred to recall, found out just how bad Drusilla's governess had been, and learned the curse she'd hit him with. It wasn't _technically_ lethal but as he practiced it on a dummy in the cellars he found himself rather grateful his shield reflexes were so good.

She'd given him a slightly embarrassed smile after the third dummy shredded and the cuts in its body began to ooze something black and oily.

"Remind me never to make you angry," was all Abraxas had said.

Now he opened the envelope his man brought him with a quick motion and scanned the contents. "Où est-elle… il?" he asked.

Without so much as a hint of a smile, the butler said, "Je crois que le jeune homme est dans l' arrière salon, monsieur."

"The back parlour?" Abraxas asked, tucking the missive into a pocket on the inside of his spotless jacket. "Oh… blast it. She – he - had to go into… excuse me."

When he entered the dreaded back parlour, Dru was standing facing away from the door. He rapped on the wood as gently as he could and, when she turned, she looked a bit peaky and had a flogger in her hands. Abraxas sighed and, after crossing the floor to her, plucked it out of her hands. "Try to stay out of my father's things, would you?" he asked as he tossed it back into the basket under the table. "I don't think you'd like to play – "

"What _is _that?" Dru asked.

"The flogger?" Abraxas asked and, when she nodded, he said, "It's to beat someone with."

"But…" she looked down at the basket, filled with similar things, and shook her head and Abraxas felt that familiar tension that preceded the need to explain his foster-parents. Drusilla, however, surprised him when she said, clearly confused, "but that wouldn't actually hurt anyone."

"I assure you," Abraxas said, "I could make that hurt quite a bit."

"A switch hurts," Drusilla said and he closed his eyes as she went on. "A _whip _hurts. That…"

"What did they do to you?" he asked, his eyes still closed as if he could somehow block out the very truth he was asking for by simply not looking at her. "You shouldn't know – "

"I told you," she said. "I was to suffer for my father's sins."

When he opened his eyes she was stripping off the boy's shirt she had on and standing there, her back to him, in the smallest of tops and even that she pulled up and he saw the scars, fine white lines that crisscrossed her back.

"Dru," he said, reaching one hand out to trace one of them.

She sucked in a breath at his touch and said, "I decided, at one point, no one would… not ever again. And I found a book in the library and I taught myself some curses and after a few… no one has… but…"

He stepped forward and tugged her chemise down over her back and, summoning the shirt she'd dropped to the floor, carefully pulled it back over her head. "How did it scar?" he asked, too quietly. "I could beat you until you bled, until you wept and begged me to stop, and still ensure not a mark was left on your skin." He set a hand on her shoulder as she stood there, still not facing him. "Was the scarring on purpose?"

"Probably," she admitted. "Who would want someone covered in –?" She stopped and turned, a mask firmly back in place over her expression. "Why do you have silly little floggers that wouldn't hurt anyone, anyway?"

"My foster-parents," he said, "They're… "

"I take it when your father doesn't get the absolute obedience he expects there are consequences?" she asked, her voice tense again and Abraxas put one finger under her chin.

"I assure you," he said, "my foster-father has never done a thing to my foster-mother she didn't fully participate in. Their relationship is unusual but it's not abuse. Though, in general, yes; my father finds ways to ensure that people who thwart him regret it."

"Not with that little 'flogger', I expect."

Abraxas smiled down at her, his finger still on her chin. "Minx. No, when he's decided to enforce his will on the world he's far subtler and crueler than that and I admit I've yet to see him fail to accomplish anything he'd quite set his mind to. The flogger though… that's just the utter embarrassment of having your parents leave their toys out."

She began to smile at that and he tugged her over to a couch and pulled her down next to him. "If you can just keep away from my father's assorted _things_ I have something for you."

He took the envelope he'd received and unfolded the paper within.

"What is it?" she asked.

"A copy of the special license your father used to marry one Gabrielle Delacour."


	14. Maternal Relations

Dru looked at the paper. Regulus Black. Some woman named Gabrielle Delacour. Abraxas cleared his throat and said, "I'm afraid you're going to have to stop referring to yourself as base born as the boot is quite on the other leg. You're far more legitimate that I am, my dear."

"My mother has a name," Dru said, the paper trembling in her grip. "I have… I have a family other than the Blacks. Other than the Lestranges." She looked up, her eyes shining. "Can I meet them? Do you have an address?"

"Well, no." Abraxas pulled out the other sheet of information, just a sprawled note. His father would have had 'words' with anyone who sent a note with such bad penmanship and even Abraxas found it irritating. "You had a family but it would seem your maternal aunt married one Bill Weasley and the Weasley family have been wholly wiped out; they were the most prominent purebloods to oppose the Dark Lord and –"

"An example was made." Dru slumped down next to him.

"Any remaining Delacours have gone so deeply into hiding I've yet to find them," Abraxas said, putting his hand on her face and turning her chin so she was looking at him. "But, Dru, I'll keep looking. If they're out there I'll find them for you." He paused. "Also, you're part Veela."

"Veela?" Drusilla asked. "Does that mean I'm not a pureblood after all? That Grandma and Aunt Willhellmina were wrong? That I'm not good enough for Ophichus?

Abraxas made a rude noise. "Sorry, minx, but Veela are considered quite respectable. You're still perfectly pure; indeed, even your balmy Aunt Bellatrix might envy you that bloodline." He pulled his hand away from her chin with some reluctance and added, "And you could be a Mudblood and you'd still be too good for this cousin of yours."

"Oh," was all Dru said.

"The Veela blood does, of course, explain your quite remarkable beauty," Abraxas said as he folded the note with the information on her maternal line back into a tidy square and tucked in away.

Dru, tracing her finger over her mother's name on the special license said, without looking up, "I'm not beautiful."

"Well, I think you look a bit like a scrubby school boy," Abraxas agreed, "but someone less familiar with your impertinence might mistake those sooty lashes and those big grey eyes for something resembling beauty." Abraxas looked over at the girl who was still staring down at her mother's name with plain wonder on her face. "I do wish I'd been able to find a lot of living cousins to love you, Dru. I'm so sorry to only be able to bring you a name."

"You've made me legitimate," she said. "After a life of being told... Abraxas, I can't tell you what this means to me."

"Well," he said dryly, "I hope you won't decide you quite despise me now that I'm the only base born in the room."

"Oh, Abraxas," she said. "I could never not... not esteem you highly."

"Mmm." Abraxas stood. "When did you say your birthday was again?"

"In eight days. Why?"

"I thought I might take you out to celebrate," Abraxas said. "And, Dru?"

"Yes?"

"If you stay in this room don't go through the cupboards, understand?"

She gave him a rather mischievous smile that made him want to haul her out of the back parlour by the arm lest she go rummaging about and asked him to explain what some of his father's more esoteric toys were for.

"I'll be in the library," was all he said, "should you decide you want company later."

"What are you doing?" Dru asked when she tracked him down.

Abraxas looked up from the rather ponderous tome he'd been bent over and smiled at the vision of the girl in the doorway. He was fairly sure she hadn't so much as run a comb through her hair since she'd rolled out of bed that morning, her breeches were charmingly tight if otherwise poorly chosen, and the loose shirt she had on was possibly the worst she could have selected. She looked damnably enchanting.

"I see my attempt to turn you into a man of fashion continues to be a failure," he observed and she laughed and lowered herself to a seat with an exaggerated and affected mincing flounce.

"Please tell me that's not how you believe I move," he said closing the book.

"You move like a cat stalking some helpless creature," she said artlessly. "All coiled energy but only the barest twitch to show for it all."

"You do know how to flatter a man," he said, amused.

"I didn't mean to flatter you," she said. "What are you doing?"

"Researching degrees of consanguinity," he said and she shrugged, her interest lost. "In news I'm sure you'll find more worthy of note, that wretched Healer has cleared me to travel so if you can manage to make yourself look more like a presentable aide and less like a street urchin we can Floo to an Inn I have been assured is not wholly unbearable. Once we are there I shall write your second-cousin Narcissa a note requesting she receive us."

"And just like that she will?" Drusilla's tone sounded as though she doubted it.

"I shall endeavor to persuade her," Abraxas said.


	15. Arrival at the Inn

Abraxas sent his valet on ahead because, while he was perfectly willing to pretend to be on this ridiculous adventure with Drusilla in order to keep her from traipsing off across the continent alone dressed as a boy, he really didn't intend to actually 'rough it' at all.

He did that in the field and that was quite enough.

When he and Drusilla Flooed to the inn he stepped out of a pleasantly large fireplace, brushed ashes from his impeccable light grey trousers and found a mirror on a wall to check whether the trip had caused any disarray to his tumbled curls or left any soot on his immaculate white shirt or skin. Drusilla followed him and fell onto the floor. He sighed as he looked down at her. Utterly unrepentant she grinned up at him.

"Urchin," he said and her grin got larger.

"Lord Nott," the innkeeper said, bowing a little too low and scraping a bit too much. "It is an honor, truly an honor, to have you grace our poor establishment with your presence."

Abraxas eyed the man. "Quite," he said. "Show my aide to his room and have an owl brought to me in about 20 minutes. I have a small note to send off to a Madam Malfoy who I understand resides in your charming village."

The innkeeper bobbed his head and babbled promises of an owl and did his Lordship desire anything to drink after his trip and maybe –

"Just do the things I've already asked and we'll get along splendidly," Abraxas drawled, pulling off first one glove and then the other. "I do need some privacy to write my note, however."

"Of course, of course," the man said, hurrying out to fetch the owl and completely forgetting to show Dru to her room. "Please, consider this parlour your private room for the duration of your stay with us."

"Do people always toad-eat you like this?" Dru whispered after the man shut the door behind him.

"Get me a quill so I can write your second-cousin," Abraxas ordered without answering but then the door opened again and the flustered innkeeper was back, ready to show Dru to her room and Abraxas was left alone to write Narcissa Malfoy.

He settled at a desk positioned against a large window and pulled a moth-eaten quill from a stash of ones in even worse condition and a sheet of thick, linen paper and began to write.

_Dear Madam Malfoy. I find myself in your charming village and request permission to call upon you. Tomorrow would suit my schedule so I shall see you at ten. Your Obedient Grandson, Abraxas Nott-Malfoy_

He rolled the parchment up and tied it with a strand of black ribbon he'd brought with him and began to pace the room, saying nothing. When the innkeeper returned with the owl he tied the note to the creature's leg and sent it off wondering, idly, whether the woman would respond.

She'd never expressed any interest in meeting him, never sent so much as a Yule present. He'd asked his foster-father about her once and Lord Nott had said, his tone very dry, "Narcissa Malfoy places too much importance on her bloodline."

Abraxas hadn't needed it spelled out, even at seven, that that meant the woman wanted nothing to do with him because he was a half-blood. It had been a few more years before he'd realized that his foster-father despised the woman for that slight, but, of course, Narcissa Malfoy had made the mistake of rejecting something Lady Nott valued and, well, Lord Nott had already had a fairly low opinion of Draco Malfoy. It didn't take much for him to dislike the man's mother as well.

Abraxas wasn't anticipating a warm reception.

He also suspected Madam Malfoy would be wary that he'd haul her back to Britain to resume the role as hostage she'd played for her son, though to whose good behavior this time was an open question since Abraxas' own loyalty to the regime was unquestioned and, even if it hadn't been, the grandmother who despised him for his very birth would hardly be useful in controlling him. Still, her wariness should ensure that she would, at least, be courteous long enough to find out who Drusilla was.

He wasn't sure, however, whether he hoped his grandmother would agree to take Drusilla in or not.


	16. Grandmother Narcissa

Narcissa Malfoy left Abraxas and Drusilla sitting for almost 20 minutes in her front parlour without having her man so much as offer them a glass of water much less any refreshments worth having.

Drusilla sat, no outward sign of any turmoil marring her perfect posture or the demure clasp of her hands in her lap, still dressed as a boy. Abraxas had allowed himself to slouch down in one of the fussy little chairs that were strewn about the room and had stretched his feet out before him so he could admire the shine on his boots when Narcissa finally deigned to enter the room and Dru sprang upward.

Abraxas pulled himself upwards with the languid grace that had won him the hearts, or at least the enthusiastic pretense of such, of countless lovely half-blood girls who followed tales of his exploits in _Witch Weekly,_ and bowed low over Narcissa Malfoy's indifferently outstretched hand. "Grandmother," he said, and watched her eyelid flicker just a wee bit, "I'd like to introduce you to Miss Drusilla Black, your cousin Regulus' daughter. Drusilla, my grandmother, Narcissa Malfoy."

"Lord Nott," the woman said. "I don't acknowledge my son's Haymarket ware by-blows, as I'm sure you know. The Malfoy line ended with Draco."

Abraxas tipped his head and said, "Just so, Madam."

Drusilla was looking from one of them to the other and, as Abraxas stepped back to observe her hold her hand out to her second-cousin, he wondered if Narcissa could see the hint of displeasure in the lines around Dru's eyes. The older woman waved her young cousin to a seat and, once they'd both settled down, Abraxas sat as well.

"So you are Regulus' daughter," Narcissa said. "You've the look of the Blacks, that's true. Who was your mother, child?"

"Gabrielle Delacour," the girl said.

"French," Narcissa observed. "Married, were they?"

"Yes," Dru said.

Abraxas sat back and admired the way Drusilla handled the formidable matriarch. Whatever horrors her Aunt Willhellmina had inflicted on the girl, and however ludicrous the woman's plan to marry this treasure off to her fragile son, a boy too despicably weak to become a Death Eater despite being a Lestrange, she'd certainly trained the girl to handle pureblood knife twists, interrogation, and double meanings without seeming to even notice them. It was a masterful performance and by the end Narcissa had invited Drusilla to stay with her, "just until some appropriate young man offers for you."

"I would be happy to sponsor her Season," Abraxas said, "Should such be necessary." He examined his nails with apparent unconcern. "I understand you don't have access to the Malfoy vaults the way I do and that you might be a bit purse pinched as a result."

"I'm sure I can manage," Narcissa said.

"No, no," Abraxas insisted. "I'm quite flush, you know. Sole heir to the Malfoy and Nott fortunes and now that sweet little Drusilla has landed in my lap, as it were, I have every intention of doing right by her."

He smiled blandly as Narcissa scrutinized him. "She's the last Black," the woman said at last. "She'll marry a pureblood."

"Don't make a cake of yourself, Grandmother," Abraxas advised as he rose to his feet. "Drusilla, pet, I'll see you on your birthday to take you out to celebrate your majority as I've promised. Until then try to behave, would you? No gambling hells or the like." He nodded to Narcissa. "No need to see me out; I'm quite sure I can find the door on my own."

He was halfway back to the inn before Lord Theodore Nott fell into step beside him. "Charming woman, your grandmother, isn't she?" the man asked.

"Father," Abraxas acknowledged.

"And pleased to be such," Theodore Nott said, "Despite the scuff on your boots."

Abraxas looked down and, upon spotting the offending mark, sighed. "It's true, I might have kicked something upon leaving that woman's house."

"A deplorable lack of self-control on your part." Theodore said. "Your mother will be arriving next week to attend your nuptials. By my count that chit will be of age in six days, which is ample time to plan a ceremony. Try not to get into too many scrapes in the meanwhile."

"Would I do that?" Abraxas asked.

"Yes," Theodore said.


	17. Compromised

Abraxas was ape-drunk when he stumbled back into the inn as an hour that was either late or early depending upon one's point of view. His plans to fall into his bed alone – rather distressingly, depressingly alone - and sleep until noon, if not later, were scuttled by the slender figure sitting in a chair in his room.

"Why're you here?" he asked the curly haired moppet in irritation. "Faced down my gorgon of a grandmother to give you a place to stay, did exactly what you wanted, and you absolutely cannot be in my room."

Drusilla Black narrowed her eyes at Abraxas. "I don't like your grandmother," she said. "She may be a prime bit of blood but she's also a narrow-minded harpy with a commonplace mind. And I'll be wherever I please." She pointed at another chair. "Sit."

A bit stunned, Abraxas sat.

"I have a bit of a peal to ring over your head, Abraxas _Malfoy-_Nott," Dru said. "You distinctly failed to mention my second-cousin was your grandmother."

"As you cannot have failed to miss," Abraxas said, wavering in the chair, "she doesn't acknowledge the connection."

"You are disgustingly drunk," Dru continued, wrinkling her nose. "And I think you have spilled something on your breeches."

"He's shockingly loose in the haft," Lord Theodore Nott agreed from the doorway. Abraxas almost fell out of his chair as he spun to see his father. "I did ask him not to get into scrapes for the next week but his customary obedience appears to have been outweighed by a most understandable desire to forget his encounter with Madam Malfoy." Lord Nott looked at his foster-son with evident disappointment. "Are you quite sure you want to have him, Miss Black? I am sure you can do better."

"I am, as you see, thoroughly compromised," Drusilla said in apparent meekness from her seat.

Theodore Nott smiled. "I am not so strait-laced as all that, Miss Black, and my memory is adaptable. Should you wish it I can, I assure you, make any hint of your less than perfect sojourn to France disappear and you will be discovered to have been in the company of a most reputable chaperone looking at art or some such as part of a tour meant to finish your education."

Drusilla smiled at him, a dimpled grin, and said, her tone combining meekness with the unyielding rigidity of a stone wall, "I am, my Lord, thoroughly compromised." She plucked at the hem of her shirt and added, "I could, however, if you deemed if necessary, become more so."

Theo Nott looked over at Abraxas and said, "Your mother is going to be so pleased."

Abraxas nodded. "She's quite a girl, isn't she?"

"I think she has you well in hand," the older gentleman said with some amusement. "Still," he turned back to Drusilla, "you must be aware that in marrying my son you'd be making a horrible mésalliance."

Dru looked up and her eyes flashed. "If you are referring to his blood status –"

Lord Nott held out a hand and stopped her. "I assure you, Abraxas' blood status is the least of his many less than sterling qualities."

Both turned to regard the man struggling to stay upright in his chair. "I do see your point," Drusilla said.

"Come." Lord Theodore Nott held out his hand and Drusilla rose gracefully to her feet and, crossing the room, allowed him to guide her to the door. "It is quite late and you are no doubt fatigued after dealing with both Narcissa and Abraxas in his cups in one day. I have sent an abigail to your room along with some far more suitable clothing and I look forward to seeing you at breakfast dressed as befits your station." Theodore looked at Abraxas. "Perhaps lunch," he amended.

"I'd suffer more at breakfast," Abraxas promised him.

"Does he like to suffer?" Dru asked Theodore with some interest.

Theodore turned a dark smile on her but all he said was, "He's simply trying to ingratiate himself as he knows I quite like seeing people in pain."

"Thus the flogger," Drusilla said with a nod.

"I find myself fascinated you've been sharing _floggers_ with Miss Black," Theodore said to Abraxas with a raise of his eyebrows.

Abraxas turned a dull shade of red and tugged at the collar of his shirt. "She went into the back parlour of the Paris house," he muttered. "And you'd left things out." He looked up at Dru and added, a crooked smile on his face, "And I don't like to suffer at all, little love. But inflicting a modest amount of suffering, that I could be talked into."

Dru smiled a little smile that might most properly be called a smirk and said, her tone very prim, "I think you should make me an offer before you start planning the wedding night."

"Until tomorrow, Abraxas," Lord Nott said, leading Drusilla firmly out of the room and shutting the door.


	18. Snow White

When Drusilla entered the private parlour Lord Theodore Nott had claimed as a dining room for himself and his guests, Abraxas had to draw upon a lifetime of social training to not gape at her like a schoolboy.

She was an adorable urchin.

She was the cutest scrubby boy he'd ever seen.

But she was a _beautiful_ woman.

His father, of course, had deep pockets, impeccable taste, and a deep seated belief that it was his unassailable right to dress anyone he wanted however he pleased. Lady Nott was the envy of the court for her wardrobe but Abraxas had never seen his father dress anyone that appealed to him quite as much as Dru did. Her costume was wholly appropriate for a girl on the very cusp of her majority and still made it painfully clear that that Veela blood had bred true.

He'd noticed she was beautiful before; now he saw she had the face of a woman men went to war for.

It was a bit of an unsettling revelation.

"Lord Nott," she said. "Thank you for the clothes and the girl. I'm quite in your debt."

"Think nothing of it," the man replied, rising to his feet.

Abraxas stumbled to get up likewise, earning himself a faint frown from his father. He held a chair out for her and Dru smiled at him. He searched her face for the impish brat he'd gotten to know but all he saw was placid, almost blank, courtesy.

She was really displeased with him about Narcissa.

"With that dark hair and pale skin you look almost like Snow White," Abraxas observed, trying to get a response from her. "All you need is carmine lips and you'd be quite the beauty."

That earned him a slight narrowing of the girl's eyes but she didn't say anything.

"Such an interesting archetype, Snow White," Theodore Nott said as he poured Dru some tea. "A woman so beautiful she captures the loyalty of every man who sees her while bringing down her step-mother, the defacto political leader, who falls prey to a rabid, jealous fit." He placed several chocolate covered strawberries on the girl's plate. "Surely a story warning us about the dangers, and rewards, of consorting with Veela."

"Indeed, my Lord," Dru said. "Though I'm no danger to anyone."

"Miss White was a danger simply by existing, my dear. I wonder, if we were to pursue that line of thought," Theodore added in an almost absent minded tone, "whether your step-mother would be Willhellmina or Bellatrix?" He paused. "No matter, of course. Do you plans for today?"

She smiled at the man and said, "No, my Lord," then, looking idly at Abraxas, licked the chocolate off one of her strawberries, her tongue curling around the red fruit and then her lips wrapping around it.

He stared at her mouth in silence.

"Perhaps Lord Abraxas would be kind enough to take me on a picnic?" she suggested after a minute. "I've never seen the French countryside." She looked at one finger, which had a smudge of chocolate on it from the strawberry, and then stuck it in her mouth and sucked it clean.

"I could do that," Abraxas said.

"Take the abigail," Lord Nott said. "Now that we've dressed Miss Black up as a girl again I'm going to have to insist you observe the expected proprieties."

"Of course," Abraxas said as Dru, watching him, bit her strawberry in half. "Would you stop that?" he finally demanded as she selected another berry from her plate and began to lick the chocolate off it.

"I have no idea to what you are referring, my Lord Abraxas," she said, setting the strawberry down and then patting at her mouth with a napkin. "I'm simply eating the breakfast your father was kind enough to dish up for me."

"Minx," he snapped and she looked down and then up at him again through those sooty lashes.

"These are quite good," was all she said. "I hope the kitchen packs some in the picnic hamper."

Lord Theodore Nott permitted himself a slight smile as Dru bit her strawberry clean through while keeping her eyes on Abraxas' slowly reddening face.


	19. Lord Nott's Correspondence

Abraxas had been complaining at some length to his foster-father how Drusilla was going to make him absolutely insane, that she was difficult and maddening and Lord Theodore Nott had been ignoring his son with what could best be deemed measured amusement as he read though his correspondence and sipped from a tumbler of firewhiskey.

He set one sheet of parchment down with a faint frown. "Do stop whining, Abraxas," he said at last. "You've irritated the chit and she's taking her revenge."

"Mother never does this," Abraxas said, sulking.

"I don't believe I've ever given her reason," Theodore said. "As much as I hate to cut off your tedious ramblings, I do have to Portkey back to London for a quick chore." He handed Abraxas a pile of notes. "I'm sure these will explain what I'm about. I should be back in time for dinner and we've been invited to your grandmother's for desserts and drinks so please try to look presentable."

"How did you contrive to wrangle an invitation from that woman?" Abraxas asked.

"I threatened her, of course," Theodore said. He looked at his nails and sighed. "I won't have time in London to get a manicure. Pity."

Abraxas watched Lord Nott leave, his eyes on whatever cuticle had displeased him, then opened the first in the pile of letters his father had give him.

_Theo. Don't be ridiculous. Drusilla will marry Ophichus so there's no need to discuss betrothal contracts. Bella._

_Theodore. I'm not being the slightest bit romantic. Drusilla's been raised for Ophichus and we're certainly not letting her go now. Bellatrix._

_Lord Nott. I must insist you return my niece at once. I don't care what 'Lady' Nott wants; you indulge that pet of yours much too much, and that half-blood bastard too. Lady Lestrange._

Abraxas paled as read the last and strode through the halls of the inn as fast he could without seeming to run until he stood outside Drusilla's door and rapped sharply on it.

"Lord Abraxas," she said, opening it and looking at him with that calm expression he'd grown to hate. "How can I help you?'

"Cut it out, Dru," he said. When her eyes narrowed at him he held a hand up. "Look, you can go back to punishing me in a moment. And I'm sorry – I really am – that I didn't tell you that harpy is my grandmother but she made it clear when I was a child what she thought of me and it's a bit of a sore spot."

Her face began to soften and he pressed on. "But, yes, I was a cad and you can go on exacting your pound of flesh in a moment, but first I need to know _now_ whether you are especially attached to either your cousin Ophichus or Aunt Bellatrix."

She didn't answer and he nearly growled at her. "Dru. Would you object if either of them turned up dead?"

"Abraxas!" she said, sounding somewhat pleased, "You don't need to apologize by killing off my unpleasant –"

"That's not what I mean, you stupid girl," he snapped. "If you care, I _might_ still have time to stop my father from slaughtering one or both of them."

"I… what?"

"Bella insulted my foster-mother in a letter about your cousin and… things," he said, "And my Lord Father has Portkeyed back to London so I can only assume he means to remind your family that Lady Nott is untouchable which he tends to do by killing people who insult her. Sometimes rather, um, I'll call it slowly, though, frankly, that's a bit of an understatement. But he said he'd be back for dinner so if you care I need to leave _now_."

He got that all out in a rush and waited for Dru to look horrified. He really needed to remember this girl was a Black, he told himself when, instead, she just began to smile. "Do you plan to kill off anyone who insults me?" she asked, nearly purring.

He reached out a hand and ran his thumb over her cheek. "Do you have to ask?" was all he said and she turned and nipped his thumb with her teeth before stepping back.

"I'll see you at dinner, Lord Abraxas," she said and shut her door and left him there in the corridor.


	20. A Connoisseur

**Trigger warning: Don't read this chapter. No, really.**

Lord Theodore Nott filled Drusilla's wine glass while saying, "Allow me to express my condolences on the untimely death of your cousin Ophichus."

"How's her Aunt Bella?" Abraxas asked.

"Too powerful to simply stab with a knife," Lord Nott said, "though I'm sure she'll have a tragic accident soon enough."

"Pity about Ophichus," Dru said, ignoring their commentary on Bellatrix, "But then he was always sickly. The poor boy wasn't really fated to live a long life."

"What was wrong with him," Lord Nott asked.

"Hypochondria, mainly," Dru said as she began to slice her duck into thin pieces, "complicated by an acute case of cowardice."

Abraxas allowed his lips to turn up in a small smile. He did rather enjoy hearing her opinion of her cousin. "I do recall you saying he had a problem assaulting housemaids and that his hands were clammy."

"I'm surprised he lived so long," Theo said. "Our world isn't an easy place for young men with those conditions."

"I had nowhere else to go," Dru said.

Abraxas' hand raising the fork to his mouth paused ever so slightly before he continued eating.

"And now you do," Theo said. "How disappointing, really, that the Lestranges allowed him to harass the staff. That's simply not done. "

Drusilla looked surprised at Lord Nott's opinion on that matter but all she said was, "He emulated his father."

"I am not surprised." Lord Nott filled his glass and leaned back and regarded his foster-son with a gaze in any other man might have looked positively doting. "How fortunate I was that you, Abraxas, were not so clumsy or short-sighted in your adolescent conquests."

"It wasn't fortunate," Abraxas said with a bit of a snort. "You made it clear that the staff belonged to you and that anyone who bothered them would be dealt with."

"I take care of my things," Lord Nott agreed. "As do you." The man regarded his wine glass and said, "Any fool can rape his employee. It's shoddy behavior. Sloppy. After the Battle of Hogwarts, of course, we all were a bit like children set free in a candy shop in that regard, shoving our hands into every bin and stuffing our faces with the treats therein. Still, Lestrange should have learned to control himself somewhat in the decades since." He glanced over at Dru who had set her fork down and was looking at him somewhat wide-eyed. "Shocked, Miss Black?" he asked.

She swallowed and then said, "I just can't quite picture you, my Lord, shoving handfuls of… candy… into your mouth with no regard for the, ummm, quality."

He tipped his head towards her, acknowledging her surprise. "It was a bit of a wild time and I was quite young, younger than even Abraxas here. Still, while there are few vices and cruelties I've not enjoyed, I quickly came to dislike rapine. What fun is assault?" He leaned back and closed his eyes, apparently lost in memories. "It was much more enjoyable to corrupt consenting innocence. A connoisseur locates the finest morsel and bends it to his will."

"This is how you met my Lady Mother?" Abraxas asked dryly.

Lord Nott laughed and opened his eyes. "I think in her case I did the bending."

Drusilla smiled.

"Torture is much the same." Lord Nott said, returning to his musings. "Any fool can simply flail about hurting their victim until they'll tell you anything they think you want to hear. The real art comes when you break their minds and make them want to do anything to please you, or, even better, eager to repent for the sins you've convinced them they've committed." He regarded Abraxas. "I admit I always rather hoped you'd go into intelligence; I thought you had a bit of a talent for it."

"I had an excellent teacher," Abraxas said, "but I think I'm better suited to be a simple foot soldier."

Dru covered a cough and Lord Nott murmured, "Quite, my dear." He set his glass down. "We're expected at the home of the lovely Narcissa for dessert. Maybe we'll be fortunate enough she'll pretend to be civil."

"Unlikely," Abraxas said, "not if I'm there."

"I think I can convince her to be pleasant to you," Theodore Nott said.


	21. Condolences and Corrections

"Narcissa, how lovely to see you," Lord Nott bowed low over the woman's hand and brushed his lips over her knuckles.

"You used to lie better," she said, pulling her hand back coldly.

"You used to be someone worth lying to," he said. "I believe you've met my foster-son, Abraxas and of course you know your cousin, Miss Black."

Abraxas nodded his head at his grandmother; Drusilla dropped a curtsey that was not quite deep enough. Narcissa narrowed her eyes and turned back to Theodore who was continuing to speak.

"I'm afraid I have to offer you condolences on the death of your… well, I guess that Lestrange boy wasn't really related to you, was he? You sister's brother-in-law's boy."

"Orion?" Narcissa asked.

"Ophichus," Drusilla said.

"Unfortunate, I'm sure," Narcissa said, "But, as you mentioned, not even a cousin so I'm not sure why you're telling me."

"I wouldn't want you to catch the ailment that ended the boy's life," Theo continued.

"What was it?" Narcissa asked. "Spattergroit?"

"Your sister, you see, insulted my wife and my son." Theo took a glass that a maidservant held towards him on a tray and took a sip. "Oh, this is very nice, Narcissa. You've always had an excellent sommelier on your staff."

Abraxas took two glasses off the tray and handed one to Dru. She thanked him without taking her attention away from Theodore.

"Bellatrix remains important enough I can't reprimand her directly so I had to send a message through her nephew. I believe we have established, however, that you, my dear _dear _Narcissa, are no longer even important enough to bother lying to convincingly."

"What do you want?" Narcissa asked, her knuckles becoming white around the stem of her glass.

"To offer you my condolences on the death of… what did you say his name was, Miss Black?"

"Ophichus," the girl said again.

Theodore Nott nodded. "Just so. Ophichus."

Abraxas drawled, "As much as I hate to not dwell appropriately on the passing of Orion, perhaps we could discuss what local venues Grandmamma recommends for weddings."

Narcissa forced a smile to her face and said, "Who are the happy couple?"

Abraxas smiled at her and said, "Let us say the wedding is merely theoretical at this point."

Drusilla tapped her foot and Abraxas turned his attention to her. "Yes, Dru?"

"Do you always do things in this very backwards fashion?" she asked. "Will I need to worry about you painting a nursery before the rabbit even dies?"

Abraxas drew a box out of his pocket and, rather languidly, handed it over to her. "Will this satisfy you, mouthy chit that you are?"

Dru opened the box and pulled out a brushed silver bracelet of heavy chain links; a single, substantial diamond sparkled by the catch and made her eyes briefly widen when she saw it. Her tongue darted out for a moment to wet her lips before she looked up at Abraxas who was smirking down at her. She handed it back to him and he looked briefly stricken until he realized she was holding her wrist out toward him so he could fasten the bracelet around it.

"I'm not sure I'd recommend being mouthy in the Nott family," Narcissa said. "Lord Nott's reputation precedes him."

Drusilla flicked a glance at her cousin as Abraxas fastened the chain around her wrist. "Your concern is touching," she said. "I'm sure you frequently expressed it to Aunt Bella when she was using me to punish Regulus for his betrayal."

Lord Theodore Nott took a sip of his wine and said, "My wife has never had cause to regret our relationship and I'm sure that Abraxas will take similar care of Miss Black."

"Your wife," Narcissa said, "is likely far too terrified of what you'd do to her if she spoke out of turn to risk hinting she made a bad bargain to anyone."

Abraxas laughed. "My mother is possibly the only person alive who isn't afraid of my father."

Dru made a slight coughing sound.

"I stand corrected," Abraxas said.


	22. The Picnic

Drusilla and Abraxas had set out towards a local ruin that was dubbed 'pictuesque' by the guidebook, planning a picnic in what they had assumed would be tumbled stone walls overgrown with flowers and vines.

The guidebook had used a very generous margin of error when choosing the word 'picturesque.' So generous Dru, poking at the fallen concrete blocks with anti-Death Eater messages spray painted on them, began to giggle.

There were flowers. They were toxic weeds that promised a quick and nasty rash to anyone who touched them but they were, technically, flowers.

Abraxas, picnic basket in one hand and blanket folded over an arm, made a face at what had probably once been a Muggle strip mall. Honestly, ruins. _Picturesque_ ruins. He was going to demand his money back from that book-seller.

Their chaperone, Dru's little abigail, cleared her throat. Abraxas glanced over at her and she said, "If the Lord and Lady wouldn't mind a suggestion?"

"Please," Abraxas said fervently as Dru continued to read the grafitti.

"Abraxas," she was saying. "I don't believe this is the proper spelling of despicable."

He glanced over at the word and snorted: 'despickable', as in 'down with despickable deth eaters.'

"If you go over that hill there's a bit of a stream and what used to be a little park."

"Done," Abraxas said and, with a firm grip on Drusilla's arm, he pulled her away from the anatomically improbable and badly spelled suggestions of what Death Eaters could do to one another.

Following the abigail's lead they were soon settled onto the blanket, the maid an appropriate distance away reading a book to give them the illusion of privacy. Abraxas lay down on his back and let Dru run her fingers through his curls, savoring the touch. She was, so it would seem, done being angry he hadn't told her about Narcissa.

"Tell me what your father's reputation is," she said. "The one that apparently precedes him and which I don't know."

"That wretched Narcissa Malfoy," Abraxas muttered. "I wish that woman had kept her own counsel."

Drusilla sat in silence, her fingers in his hair and, after several minutes of peaceable silence, Abraxas said, "He works for the Dark Lord's Intelligence Sevice. I think he runs it now, but he's always taken an interest in… hurting people. Both for work and – "

"For play?" Drusilla asked and Abraxas sighed.

"Yes," he said. "Though, I swear to you, my mother is no victim… what they do, she…"

"Do you want to?" Drusilla asked and Abraxas felt himself tense and slowly rolled over and pulled himself up to his hands and knees and looked at the beautiful girl sitting next to him on their picnic blanket.

"I wouldn't want to hurt you," Abraxas stumbled over the words, "After the way you were beaten as a child, I wouldn't want to bring that – "

She cut him off by placing a finger over his lips. He could feel goose pimples rise over his whole body at that simple touch.

"There are so many ways to suffer," she said, starting to trace her finger over and around his mouth as he tried not to move. "Your father's little flogger is just the beginning."

"He has a lot more toys than that," Abraxas said, his voice husky as he stared at Dru.

"Oh, I know," she said, her eyes on his mouth. He breathed out a 'how' and she smiled a slow, languorous smile that did dangerous things to his heart rate. "You left me in the back parlor alone and told me not to go through the cupboards. Naturally the first thing I did was go exploring."

"Dru," Abraxas whispered, caught between horror and some other, almost unnamable, emotion.

She pulled her hand off his mouth and took some strawberries out of the basket. "Feed me," she said and his eyes widened.

He took one berry and cut a slice from it with his knife and held it out to her. She leaned forward and it took it from his palm with her teeth, her tongue tracing across his skin as she did; Abraxas closed his eyes and tried to control himself.

"Baggage," he said into the blackness.

When he opened his eyes she was licking her lips and he shuddered. "Another, please," she said and he very carefully cut a second slice from the strawberry.

Many ways to suffer, indeed.


	23. Pet Arrives

**Trigger warning: I changed the rating to M. This is why. If you didn't read Bodyguard of Lies, well, surprise. If BDSM offends you, or might cause you to make a comment about 50 Shades, this chapter is not for you. **

**. . . . . . . . .**

When Lady Nott stepped out of the Floo Theo wrapped a hand in her golden hair and dragged her down to her knees. In his calm, uninflected voice he said, "When I asked you to be here at 7:00 I didn't expect to have to wait until 7:10 and, furthermore, there is soot on your gown."

"So?" she asked, flinching as his hand tightened.

"Did you leave your manners behind in London?" he asked, "or, mayhap, you thought I wouldn't be prepared to deal with any rudeness because we were away from home?"

She looked up at him and he laughed. "Eyes," he said and, almost sullenly, she lowered her gaze back to the floor. Theodore released her with a push of his hand and she fell forward, catching herself with her hands and knelt on the polished wood floor of what had become the de facto private parlour of the Notts at the inn where they were staying. Theodore pulled her leash from a pocket and clipped it to the ring set in the leather collar at her neck.

"One of the unfortunate limitations of this otherwise excellent establishment," he said, "is the lack of good places to which I might tie naughty wives but I have found a lovely old iron hook that will do. Come." With a tug on her leash he led her on her hands and knees across the floor to a hook in the wall that had surely been intended for more innocent purposes than this and looped the leash around it. He tweaked her wand out of a pocket at her side and, after slipping it away in his own holster, pulled her skirts up and folded them back with an unhurried air. A quick slice with his wand to her knickers and he stepped back to admire the woman kneeling on the floor before him, her gown up and skin bared to his eyes and touch.

"I have missed you, pet," he breathed out and leaned down to run a finger along the curve of one buttock as she shivered at the soft contact. "It's been a dull week dealing with our son's tiresome grandmother. I think I'll punish you as much for my boredom as for your surely deliberate lack of punctuality."

He pulled a slight flogger from a pocket and drew the strands of the leather gently across her skin, smiling as she gasped and swallowed audibly. "Oh, that's right," he cooed, "you don't really care for this one, do you?"

He raised his arm and brought it down with some force, admiring the red lines that almost immediately appeared on her pale skin. "Perhaps," he continued, lifting his arm again, "you should have considered that before you were late."

He struck her again and she shuddered and pressed one side of her face against the floor. He walked around and squatted next to her, one finger tracing along her jaw. "It's going to hurt very much, pet, before I am done. You're welcome to beg as much as you like but don't expect me to listen."

She swallowed again and he stood and struck her again. "Three," he said. "I think we'll go to thirty today and then, perhaps, a few more later after you've cleaned yourself up. I find I simply cannot contemplate spending too much time with you when you have _soot_ on your _dress_." He struck her again and this time she made an audible whimper.

"Four," he said very quietly. Then, "five."

She began to beg at nine. She apologized for being late. She promised it would never happen again. She begged for forgiveness.

"Ten," he said, hitting her with more force than he had until that point and she let out a muffled scream and he watched her curl her hands into helpless fists.

"I couldn't help the soot," she finally cried out as he hit her again. "My Lord, please, Floo travel."

"Excuses?" he murmured.

"No," she cried out in a sudden panic. "I'm sorry, my Lord, please."

"Twelve," he continued and she was really crying now and he stopped for a moment to enjoy the sound. "Maybe," he said, "I should increase the count to forty to remind you of my feelings on excuses."

That threat pulled a strand of genuine fear from her and he squatted down to admire the red lines crossing her beautiful skin and to savor that fear.

She flinched as he ran a hand over her, anticipating a blow that didn't come, and he reached between her legs to idly stroke her. She whimpered and shuddered but he pulled his hand away, wrenching a wholly different sob from her, and after wiping his fingers on her skin, stood up and struck her again. "Thirteen," he said and then, following that blow almost immediately with another one, "fourteen."

Theo had his arm raised to strike his pet again when the door opened and Drusilla walked in. She had already opened her mouth to say something but, seeing the tableau before her, quickly apologized for intruding instead, her eyes kept with great care only on Lord Nott's face. Theodore laughed as she backed out of the room.

"You'll like her, pet," he promised the woman at his feet. "Abraxas has, as you requested of him, found someone who can and will hold him. Now, however, I believe I was only at fourteen and we have a bit more to do. Shall I continue?"

"Yes, my Lord," she whispered and he ran a hand over the curve of one hip with a possessive fondness that spoke, albeit quietly, of the love so few could see.


	24. Dru and Pet Breakfast Together

Drusilla smiled at Lady Nott across the breakfast table.

"I'm sure you have some… questions… about yesterday," Lady Nott began, clearly prepared to have to justify her somewhat dramatic entry into the Inn.

Dru nodded. "I was going to ask where you got your lovely skirts. I didn't get a terribly close look at them but from what I saw the fabric was remarkable. And, of course, you have flawless skin. Perhaps you have some tips you can share. My Aunt Wilhellmina didn't spend enough time on skin care and it's unfortunate but it's clear she should have."

Lady Nott smiled at her future daughter-in-law with the beginnings of delight and friendship.

"I told you you'd like her," Theodore said from behind his paper.

Abraxas was looking from his mother to his fiancé with horror spreading across his face as he realized what Drusilla must have walked in on. "Excuse me," he muttered, and sprang from the table and stalked out of the room.

Dru narrowed her eyes at his disappearing back.

"Abbie has always embarrassed easily," Lady Nott said, ignoring the young man's retreat. "It's a common failing among the young." She poured milk into her tea and began to stir it. "Don't fret that just because he pretends to be shocked by his parents means he'll be equally inhibited with you; reports from exploits around town suggest he doesn't have that problem."

Dru flashed an inscrutable smile at Lady Nott as she pulled some toast off a platter and began spreading marmalade on it.

"I'll have Lord Nott order some of the cream he gets for me for you to try," Lady Nott continued as she lifted her teacup to her rosebud mouth. "It's quite effective. And once you're married and back in town, I can introduce you to my seamstress."

"How did you and Lord Nott meet, if I might be so bold as to ask," Drusilla asked, pouring her own tea. "You seem unusually well suited."

Lady Nott sighed with shameless pleasure as she let her gaze settle on her husband, still mostly obscured behind his paper. "I'm not sure how much Abbie has told you," she said.

"He did say you met when you were assigned to his room in some Scottish castle, Dru said. "But there has to be more to your life than that."

"Oh, not really," Lady Nott said. "I was a poor girl in a miserable village, mostly magical with a handful of very confused Muggles."

Theodore Nott made a disparaging sound. "All enslaved now, I hope," he muttered. "Vile things, Muggles."

"I'm sure they are," Lady Nott said soothingly, "or slaughtered."

"That's also acceptable," Theodore acknowledged.

"I had more brothers than I care to remember," she continued.

"Who show up constantly wanting one favor or another," Theo said. "They need money to settle on what seem to be an endless stream of brides and shotguns and forgiveness for hunting out of season and permission to do some thing with deer I don't even want to think about."

"Being part of a large sibling group is tedious," Lady Nott agreed. "I've suggested you just send an unequivocal message back to stop bothering you but so far you keep tolerating their impositions."

"I'm a tolerant man," Lord Nott said.

"The number of children in my house was one reason I didn't want any of my own," Lady Nott continued. "By the time I was seventeen I'd had quite enough of changing nappies and wiping noses and seeing my mother get tired and ill from one pregnancy after another. Lord Nott was like a knight in shining armour, rescuing me from a lifetime of grinding poverty and ignorance." She took a sip of her tea and then touched the leather collar at her neck, hooking her finger in the plain d-ring. "So many people see us and assume he's grinding me down in other ways when it's really quite the opposite."

"Some of us do prefer women who are our… perhaps equals in the wrong word," Lord Nott said. "An ignorant peasant is no challenge. Having a viper of the court on her knees is much more pleasurable."

"Abraxas?" Dru inquired.

"Fostering a child did manage to give me the delights of a son without having to be pregnant myself," Lady Nott said. "And Abbie is a joy. A handful, as I'm sure you've noticed, but a joy."

"He doesn't seem especially difficult to manage to me," Dru said.

Lord Nott laughed. "He just needs a firm hand," the man said, still behind his paper. "One he doesn't actually notice, of course, but keep him in line and he'll eat out of your palm."

"Quite literally," Dru agreed.


	25. Wedding Preparations

Lady Nott stood in Drusilla's room looking through the wardrobe her husband had provided the girl with a slight frown on her beautiful face. "Do you have a preference for your wedding gown?" she finally asked.

Dru ran a finger down the sleeve of one dress. Her expression mirrored that of the older woman at her side. "Something less… demure… than these."

Lady Nott made a questioning noise.

"He met me in a gambling hell dressed as a boy and he's a Nott and I'm a Black. These are all perfectly tasteful, of course, but…"

Dru made a disgruntled noise.

"Paris," Lady Nott said. "I'll get the portkey from Lord Nott."

"The ceremony is _tomorrow_," Dru said, "or so I have been informed." She paused. "Is Lord Nott always that… definitive?"

Lady Nott smiled. "Oh yes. But we'll find you something that suits your station and isn't quite as charmingly modest as these." She ran her eyes over the frame of the younger woman. "I think black with black embroidery and something that shows the curve of your breasts. Perhaps the Mark as a repeated pattern at the hem." She frowned. "You aren't going to be squeamish about the Mark are you?"

Drusilla snorted.

"People are," Lady Nott said.

"Fools are," Drusilla said. "Fools who've never been powerless and then had power handed to them in the shape of a man wearing that sign on his arm."

Lady Nott hooked her arm through Dru's. "Let's go shopping," she said. "How do you feel about shoes?"

"I like shoes," Dru said.

. . . . . . . . .

"Where are they?" Abraxas demanded, pacing in the parlour.

Theodore Nott looked at him. "Shopping, I assume," he said. "I was informed that none of my dress selections were appropriate for a Black bridal gown and they'd be back when they found one."

Abbie jerked his head back to look at his father. "_Mother_ said that to you?" he asked.

Theodore smiled. "Don't make the mistake so many people do and assume I oppress my lady wife. She does as she pleases." He glanced down at his nails and frowned at an errant cuticle. "She, of course, didn't tell me my taste had erred where anyone could hear her."

"I've never heard her criticize you," Abraxas said, eyes narrowed. "Not even so much as to suggest your cravat was badly tied."

"Have you ever seen me with my cravat tied badly?" Theodore Nott looked horrified by the idea.

"To be fair, no," Abraxas admitted.

Lord Nott looked at his son with amusement. "Your mother would not more criticize me in public than, I am sure, the Lady Drusilla would allow a censorious word about you to cross her lips where anyone could hear it." He smiled. "Though I do think your tolerance for mouthiness in private might be greater than mine."

"Dru's never mouthy," Abraxas said, settling at last into a seat. "She's just… amused." He made a show of grabbing his hair and yanking on it. "And maddening."

"Well, I'm sure she'll do an excellent job keeping you in check," Theodore said, pulling out a wooden box and sliding it toward his foster-son. "I am rather tired of pulling you out of whorehouses and your mother, as I've mentioned, requires that you produce offspring."

"What's this?" Abraxas asked, opening the box. It was a nearly black wood with attractive carvings that only writhed when you didn't look directly at them. The inside had three chambers, each somewhat larger than a man's fist. A slice of fresh apple sat within one of them. "Apple?" he asked.

"I was testing the stasis charm," Theodore said. "If that apple slice hadn't browned, it would appear to be working." He reached over and plucked the fruit out. "It's part of your wedding present; I just need to make a quick jaunt back to London for the rest of it."

"Do I want to know?" Abraxas asked, pushing the box back to his father.

Theodore Nott shrugged. "The girl is giving you her heart tomorrow. I thought it might be… poetic… to ensure she had a spare or two."


	26. The Wedding

Lord Theodore Nott smiled toothily at Narcissa Malfoy as they stood together in her small but immaculate back garden and waited for Abraxas to appear. "It was very kind of you to permit your grandson to use your lovely home for his wedding," Theo said.

The look Narcissa gave him would have withered the soul of a weaker man.

"Of course," Theo continued, "the girl is your cousin as well so it's quite the family affair, isn't it? Toujours Pur and all."

Theo noted with amusement that he wouldn't have thought it possible for a woman's eyes to narrow even more than Narcissa's already had.

"Be careful, my dear," he said. "You'll get wrinkles." He glanced down at his nails and wished, again, to be back in London. This bout of rustication would end as soon as Abraxas was safely leg shackled to the Black girl.

To his Snow White.

Theodore had quite decided that the girl's step-mother, if one were to follow the metaphor of the tale, had to be Bellatrix. That Drusilla would likely prefer to step into the woman's shoes rather than ride off into the sunset with her prince did make her life not as perfectly parallel to the story as aesthetics demanded but Theodore was willing to make compromises when he absolutely had to.

When, he mused, it benefited him to do so.

He considered Bellatrix's choice of footwear and decided that it was, however, of utmost importance that Drusilla only metaphorically step into the woman's shoes as actually wearing any of the monstrosities that Bella seemed to prefer was simply not acceptable.

Abraxas stood, looking utterly bored, by the unfortunate statue that the local official had decided made a good place to conduct the ceremony. Abraxas had looked briefly at the stone figure, his top lip curled with disdain, and then settled to wait patiently for his bride to be tucked into whatever dress she and Lady Nott had picked out in Paris. Theo had often wondered where Draco had gotten his execrable taste in women – I mean, really? Granger? – but now he surmised it was from the same place his mother had gotten her taste in art. Proof that people could grow up with more money than some gods and still have no eye for beauty.

He glanced over at Lady Nott, a woman with nearly perfect taste. Narcissa had sneered at the collar at the woman's throat, a sneer she'd quickly hidden when she saw the slight tightening of his eyes. He'd repeatedly told his wife she didn't need to wear the collar in public if she'd prefer to avoid the condemnation of her peers.

She'd told him they could all go fuck themselves.

He'd punished her for her unladylike language, of course, then showered her with several ropes of diamonds. She really was perfection. She caught his glance and smiled at him.

When Dru appeared Lord Nott allowed himself the extravagant response of a raise of his brows. Lady Nott had thrown conventional fashion to floor and stepped on it with her expensive shoes and opted to outfit the girl in a gown of black tulle that swirled around her like a cloud with a neckline that nearly plunged to her waist. Dru had what seemed to be a simple black silk ribbon tied at her neck as a choker, long tails of which reached down her back to tremble at her heels.

The ladies had indeed decided his gown choices were too demure for the last Black heiress. This was no girl fresh from the schoolroom. Lord Nott observed that Abraxas had wet his lips and that Narcissa looked furiously disapproving.

What a narrow-minded bastion of conventionality she'd aged into. It was unfortunate but some people were simply not capable of growth and were destined to remain behind. This, Theodore Nott mused, was why the world needed a changing of the guard at regular intervals. It was time, he thought, for another change.

As Drusilla walked towards the no longer bored Abraxas, waiting for her by Narcissa's stature and the local official, Theo found himself amused with the bride's neckwear when he was quite sure he knew whose hand held the leash in their relationship.

If Abraxas thought it was he, well, he was fooling himself.

. . . . . . . . . . .

**A/N – Dru's dress is on the Pinterest board for this story which is linked from my profile.**

**Thank you for all your lovely comments on this story. I remain charmed that anyone reads this.**


	27. Heart Your Gift

Narcissa, having been convinced of the wisdom of hosting Drusilla and Abraxas' wedding, had also agreed to host the reception. Since there were no guests it was a simple affair. Lord Theodore Nott had trusted her to supply the wine as it was one of the few things, in his opinion, the woman managed to consistently do well.

Lady Nott found the caterer. Lord Nott had never quite recovered from the time he'd spent eating wilted weeds and too much venison during his stint in Scotland and had become even more particular about food as a result. He was quite sure that Narcissa Malfoy would not be able to make him happy in this regard. His wife, however, had.

As they were sipping the port that had been brought round to finish the evening Theodore pulled out his gift and handed it to his new daughter-in-law, the lovely Lady Malfoy-Nott. She dimpled at him and he wondered with delight how many people would see that smile and think the girl wearing it was sweet.

She unwrapped the package, setting the dull silver paper aside with care, and admired the carvings on the wooden box. "This is quite pretty," she said.

"Open it," Lord Nott suggested, sipping his port and watching Narcissa Malfoy out of the corner of his eye.

Drusilla Malfoy-Nott lifted the lid of the box and tilted her head to the side as she regarded the contents. He saw her run her finger along the first name plate. "Rastaban Lestrange," she murmured. "This is a truly delightful gift, Lord Nott."

"The middle chamber is empty," Abraxas observed. "Am I to assume you expect us to fill it or will that be an anniversary present? I'd hate to misstep."

Narcissa, Theodore Nott was pleased to see, looked paler than her worthless son ever had.

"Perhaps a family project," he murmured. "The stasis charm will keep all the hearts fresh for you, my dear."

"Tell me they died begging," Dru said, looking at her father-in-law through her lashes.

Theodore Nott smiled. "I had no idea Lestrange or his wife had such large vocabularies. It was a pleasant discovery. So many people stick to 'please' and 'why are you doing this' and 'arrhhhh' but they were much more eloquent."

Dru nodded, looking back at the hearts with ruthless pleasure. "I used to compose pleas and see if I could remember them in times of… stress. Apparently they recalled some of them."

Abraxas' fingers clenched around his wine glass.

"I commend your creativity," Theodore Nott said.

"Bellatrix as well?" Abraxas asked.

"Oh yes," Drusilla said, her fingers playing with the empty chamber in her box.

"The Dark Lord," Theodore Nott said conversationally, "is, of course, a great man, but he's retired from the day to day burdens of running the nation. Like many revolutionaries he enjoyed the fight more than the bureaucracy it engendered. Such tedium, really, dealing with petitions and taxation rates and controlling Muggles."

"Indeed," Drusilla said, taking a sip from her port. "This is excellent, by the way."

"Thank you," Narcissa said, her voice strained.

"Dear Bella has really handled much of the day-to-day management for years now. There's been an unfortunate mortality rate among the original staff and she's all that's left."

"I'm sure they were all weakened by the strains of the war," Dru said. "So sad. They sacrificed so much for us all." She raised her glass. "Let us remember their nobility."

Everyone raised a glass, Abraxas openly smirking, Lady Nott looking smugly pleased and Narcissa was keeping her face a study in neutrality. "To our fallen comrades," Lord Nott said. "I saw so many of them at the end."

They all drank and Drusilla said. "Poor Bellatrix must feel so alone now that it's just her and the Dark Lord."

"A study in sorrow, I'm sure," Abraxas said.

"Depression can do such awful things to the immune system," Drusilla said. "I'm dreadfully afraid we might read of her succumbing to some wasting disease any day."

Theodore Nott sighed dramatically. "That would be tragic." He patted his lips with a napkin. "In more cheerful topics, however, once you two have enjoyed your honeymoon and have returned to Britain, I'd like to introduce you to the Dark Lord. A bit of a court presentation, if you will. You cannot fail to charm him." He glanced over at his foster son. "Be sure to pick up something appropriate to wear in Paris."


	28. The Wedding Night

Abraxas looked at Drusilla. No more the scrubby lad he'd mistaken her for in a gambling hell two short weeks ago, no longer on the run from abusive guardians, she lay on their bed with a smirk on her face.

An actual smirk.

He sometimes had to remind himself that he was not wholly a callow, untried youth when facing this woman. He'd killed people. He'd killed the leaders of the resistance, for Merlin's sake, and broken the last opposition to the Dark Lord's rule. He'd earned Lordship younger than any Death Eater in history. He'd been raised by a man whose habits were legendary and who'd not been unstinting in his education.

She was barely out of the schoolroom. She'd been educated _at home_; she hadn't even learned to manipulate people in the brutal halls of Hogwarts.

Though, as he considered the matter, the Lestranges had probably been fairly effective as teachers in that regard. Her history might be shoddy but her Dark magic skills were probably just as good as the vicious pleasure she'd taken in his father's present. That had been a bit of an eye-opener. So. Lord Nott intended them to remove Aunt Bellatrix from the power structure and insert themselves.

Well, he wouldn't weep to see that madwoman bleed out at his feet.

Now he studied the woman in front of him. She hadn't opted for a demure bridal negligee, which, he supposed, shouldn't surprise him. No white satin for this woman. The black lace that made up the corset she wore had to have been made by laborious hand; thanks to his father he had an eye for such things and this was no Muggle mass-produced tatting. The seams of her silk stockings were so perfectly straight she must have used magic to get them aligned and the garter holding them up looked almost afraid to fail in its task. The ribbons from her bridal gown were still tied about her neck and streaming down over the bed. No, she bore almost no resemblance, other than the look of mischief in her eyes, to the brat he'd first met.

That wasn't what made his breath catch in his throat, however. Any woman taken shopping in Paris by Lady Nott was sure to come back splendidly attired.

What made him have to remind himself that he was a _Death Eater,_ for Merlin's sake, was the blindfold she tossed him.

And that it was clear she didn't mean it to go on her.

**~ finis ~**


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